Ubuntu Prepares To Kill Off Metacity, Ups Compiz

[deadruby2006]

Unity is clunky, heavyweight, uncustomizable, and (as of this post) invades your privacy, but you don't need to delve into the registry to enable minimize and maximize buttons or install 5 extensions to restore sane functionality.

Ah, it's refreshing to see that I am not the only one who sees it this way. IMO, so far Unity = epic disappointment. I use gnome on Ubuntu Lucid desktop (started with Karmic, and so far, no ubuntu desktop has met my standards to beat lucid. Maybe because I enjoy the Compiz composting and the general lack of "Unified" "convenience"). I use Xfce with 12.10 Ubuntu Studio for my PA computer to keep a modern jack audio development environment, and I use xDark when I must cross over for microsoft capability. I liked cinnamon on mint, but have managed to stick with Ubuntu so far. Headaches that I have experienced have mostly been with Skype, wifi chipsets and conflicting drivers in the kernel, realtime kernel setup with the jack server, and the persisting hemroid that is Unity showing up as the main desktop payload in every desktop distribution since. I used to check distrowatch like the lottery to see if this would be changed for a while, but have for now given up on such hopes and magical thinkings. Most everything else has been smooth sailing. In response to the new architecture entangled in Unity and Gnome3, I have grown curious as to whether one would experience the same shortcomings in a redhat environment such as openSUSE. It's nice to not have to rely on a prehistoric relic of a software corporation and its tired old methods of domination, I'm so happy for linux! Not sure what c****nikal and g*ome are doing trying to turn my desktop into an ipad like they did with the introduction of unity. As far as privacy concerns, they probably don't care as long as the venture capital funding keeps coming in. At least someone released a remedy to the exploit in Unity. More then I can say for Android, Facebook, Google, Skype, Microsoft, basically just about every software platform in the stock exchange.... the way I see it, they can watch until the roads on the moon rot

[uid313]

I think you are misunderstanding this: they will drop it from the 'main' repository, which means it will move to the 'universe' repository.

Ah, I see!

That is perfectly fine then!

[JanC]

Also, if they drop it from Ubiquity and the installer image, why drop it from the repository too?

I think you are misunderstanding this: they will drop it from the 'main' repository, which means it will move to the 'universe' repository.

[grege]

Unityis far more customizable than Gnome! You mentioned some third party extensions that allows you to change more things in Gnome, but you forget about ubuntu tweak utility. Gnome doesn't even allow to change a font size which makes it simply a joke.

Perhaps you should try Gnome for more than 5 minutes before saying something so silly.

Gnome has it's own tweak tool, you can play with individual font sizes and scale everything up and down to your hearts content. Gnome has 10 to 20 pages of extensions for each version on https://extensions.gnome.org. Gnome 3.6 is up to 15 pages already. You can customize as much or as little as you want.

Gnome is fairly customizable (see https://extensions.gnome.org/). Unity, however, is not. That doesn't mean Unity is bad, it works for a lot of people (not that I'm a huge fan of it either).

Unityis far more customizable than Gnome! You mentioned some third party extensions that allows you to change more things in Gnome, but you forget about ubuntu tweak utility. Gnome doesn't even allow to change a font size which makes it simply a joke.

It's good to know that I am not the only one who thinks like this. After how much flame I got for saying the same things I almost thought that I was the only one who thought that some people are actively trying to kill linux desktop.

There are many more of us - the sane ones.

People like you?

No, but people like you probably. It's a known fact Icaza's anti Linux jerk. Till planet gnome allows him to post his bull and till some insane people - who make gnome unusable - aren't fired, Linux will suffer.

[oyvind]

There are excellent lightweight alternatives like Lubuntu and Xubuntu. Consolidating and having less software to maintain makes sense.

[schmidtbag]

IMHO, Canonical's inspiration is Android. Android is all about the commercialization of Linux. The Android ecosystem pushes its own agenda, does things its own way, and contributes upstream only ween its business model deems it necessary or required. Canonical wants a Desktop version of Android. That's where the money is.

Hah that's an excellent way of putting it. While Android does commercialize linux for non-PC platforms, it's barely binary compatible with the average linux program, so it isn't much use. While I don't see why google made it so difficult to get linux native programs to run on android, I'm not necessarily annoyed with them because first of all, google does help contribute to the linux kernel but they're freely allowed to do whatever they want and they did a good job. If they stuck with as many currently available open source software as they could (instead of writing their own graphical server, java, etc), there's a possibility linux as it is now might've held them back.

[uid313]

No fan of Metacity

I am no fan of Metacity, but it works and is reliable.
I find it more reliable and stable than Compiz.

Also Compiz requires OpenGL and hardware acceleration, so how will the installer work on system that does not have that?

Also, now without Compiz there is no software-render fallback?

Also, if they drop it from Ubiquity and the installer image, why drop it from the repository too?
Some people may actually like Compiz and want to install it on their system.
Maybe it because Metacity is now unmtained since GNOME moved from GNOME 2.32 to GNOME 3 which use Mutter instead?