Compiz 0.9.14.2 Released After Two Years

[asriel]

Thanks. Now I wish somebody tested them side-by-side on different videocards like Michael does %)

Is there many options for Linux? Nvidia burn in hell with their ugly blobs and optimus. Built-in cards in Intel and Ryzen works well in both, and as for desktop computers where you really do not care about battery life and have almost unlimited (compared to laptop) processing power - who cares? In fact for desktop I would say 0.8 is better - you do not care about power usage at idle (+- 1watt at idle is nothing for desktop) , hardware is powerfull enough to do smooth effects on both but 0.8 has more effects and plugins. All this difference really matters only for laptops limited by power consumption and heat.

I use only laptops and servers - so for my use battery life and work under low frequencies and deep power saving states are top priority, and here 0.9 is a winner. And that is the reason Iwhy I do not use many fancy effects that are missing in 0.9 tree.

[Sin2x]

Gentoo and compiled it from compiz-reloaded github. I've tried the latest 0.9.14.2 release - and for sure wiki was not written considering it. And I do believe that there were a lot of bug fixes done. But I am not using 0.9.14.2 long enough so maybe I just did not hit the bugs there. The main impression is that the engine behind 0.9 with this splitting of compositing and openGL works better than old 0.8 engine. Also in 0.8 I've noticed that something happen from time to time and compiz starts constantly using 5-6% CPU even on idle and that kills battery life of the laptop. That was really annoying to monitor if compiz got stuck and need to be retarted. But never happened so far on 0.9.

Thanks. Now I wish somebody tested them side-by-side on different videocards like Michael does %)

[asriel]

That's interesting. Which distro and which version of 0.8 did you use exactly? Even Debian wiki mentions that 0.8 branch is considered more stable: https://wiki.debian.org/Compiz though there can always be exception to the rule, of course, depending on your particular setup.

Gentoo and compiled it from compiz-reloaded github. I've tried the latest 0.9.14.2 release - and for sure wiki was not written considering it. And I do believe that there were a lot of bug fixes done. But I am not using 0.9.14.2 long enough so maybe I just did not hit the bugs there. The main impression is that the engine behind 0.9 with this splitting of compositing and openGL works better than old 0.8 engine. Also in 0.8 I've noticed that something happen from time to time and compiz starts constantly using 5-6% CPU even on idle and that kills battery life of the laptop. That was really annoying to monitor if compiz got stuck and need to be retarted. But never happened so far on 0.9.

[Sin2x]

I was using 0.8 reloaded branch for quite a while - but after this news decided to give a try to 0.9. And I would say that 0.9 performs better. 0.8 used to freeze on havy load of my laptop - but 0.9 does not. And so far I never had 0.9 crash - but 0.8 I do need to restart from time to time. So i definetely go for 0.9 with one exception - I still use Emerald from 0.8 as window decorator, and good news that emerald from 0.8 do work with compiz 0.9 and more than that it even compiles with 0.9 libs and headers.

That's interesting. Which distro and which version of 0.8 did you use exactly? Even Debian wiki mentions that 0.8 branch is considered more stable: https://wiki.debian.org/Compiz though there can always be exception to the rule, of course, depending on your particular setup.

[hamishmb]

Can't remember if someone mentioned this here already, but for those on Wayland, Wayfire is a similar project.

[asriel]

For those who want to try out Compiz in 2022 I recommend to use the more stable 0.8 branch before they switched to C++ as it's faster and more stable: https://gitlab.com/compiz/compiz-cor...leases/v0.8.18

I was using 0.8 reloaded branch for quite a while - but after this news decided to give a try to 0.9. And I would say that 0.9 performs better. 0.8 used to freeze on havy load of my laptop - but 0.9 does not. And so far I never had 0.9 crash - but 0.8 I do need to restart from time to time. So i definetely go for 0.9 with one exception - I still use Emerald from 0.8 as window decorator, and good news that emerald from 0.8 do work with compiz 0.9 and more than that it even compiles with 0.9 libs and headers.

[Mattia_98]

Compiz was the reason I first started using Linux <3
The effects really impressed me

[BlueJayofEvil]

On a semi-related note, KDE Plasma has been waiting for the desktop cube effect to return since a little over a year ago. Plasma 5.23 was when it unfortunately removed due to the code being incompatible with the underlying API changes and requiring a large rewrite before it can come back.
The relevant bug report is here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438883

[Sin2x]

And uses 10x more ram... I think the lightest ubuntu is like 500MB+ on the desktop now, and I used to run compiz on a Radeon 7000 laptop with only 16MB vram for kicks it could just barely do it and 192MB system ram.

Even XFCE is bloated these days the whole distrobution of XFCE used to be a couple MB.

XFCE has to follow upstream GTK3 where the most bloat comes from.

[terrywang]

Good old days of Compiz. Compiz's eye candy was what drew me into Linux.

LoL

Later on, GNOME 3 completed ditched its fallback mode making Compiz impossible to run with it.

KDE SE 4.10+ (4.11) absorbed most of the good eye candy effects into its KWin, not bad.