[FusionComm] The usual Beryl user..

[Alyssa Hung]

Sam Spilsbury wrote:
> 
> 
> On 7/20/07, *jug* <frustbox at gmail.com <mailto:frustbox at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 7/20/07, *mega lex* <megalexis at gmail.com
>     <mailto:megalexis at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         As a usual Beryl user I am wondering what happened to beryl. Why
>         was it killed? If its not dead why hasn't there been a new release?
> 
>     Beryl wasn't really "killed". It is currently being merged with
>     compiz, because the developers decided that its wasted effort and
>     work to maintain compiz and beryl. And as you know beryl was
>     basically just a modified compiz with some more plugins. 
> 
> 
> Beryl core was about 3x bigger afaik.

And loaded with features that have still not been fully reproduced in 
Compiz Fusion. Though I have no doubt that Compiz Fusion brings its own 
enhancements over what Beryl was--regexp matching and window matching 
rule lists, to name two that I like a lot--the process of getting new 
(and even old) features into Compiz seems a lot less straightforward 
than it used to be. This is especially true when we must consider the 
jurisdiction of a given feature or plugin: those distributed with 
Compiz, such as Cube and Scale, can be expected to evolve at a 
significantly slower pace than those available through the greater 
Compiz Fusion project.

For all the criticisms that were mounted against Beryl's development 
process, the net result from the users' perspective was a superb 
compositing window manager with a very active and responsive developer 
community. A community clearly interested in what users can do with 
their computers _today_, not only what can be done once bug X is fixed 
in driver Y or feature A becomes available in system-level library B.

I believe quite a lot more was accomplished by the Beryl project than 
merely a few extra plugins and minor hacks to the core.

>         Actually I know that it merged but many of my friends that got
>         into linux just because they loved beryl are asking me the same
>         thing. 
> 
>     Try Compiz Fusion, it's even better. Alsthough there is no stable
>     release yet.
> 
> 
> Mh.. you might find that you will have different problems with 
> compiz-core than beryl core. I do know for sure that certain 
> applications might behave strangely / cause compiz to crash but thats 
> because beryl-core was full of hacks to make it work with XYZ application.

Indeed. Workarounds like simple blur and a toggle-able option for wine 
and other strange legacy-type windows, neither of which are likely to 
become available in Compiz. There _are_ legitimate technical reasons for 
why they should not be included in Compiz. But not every user has an 
appreciation for such abstract, technical concerns. "Why break something 
that works?" Would anyone like being told that it only worked because it 
was broken in the first place?

> To tell you the truth, Compiz Fusion has been ready for a release for 
> quite some time, but there are things like artwork and website stuff 
> standing in the way.

And functional regressions, of which some developers have said they want 
as few as possible by the time a release is made. ^_^ Thank goodness 
that people have found ways to turn some previously core or core 
plugin-related features into separate plugins.

With regard to Website stuff, there's a lot of work going on behind the 
scenes relating to themes, forum structure, wiki structure, and even 
drafts of specific introductory and informative articles, so rest 
assured that something is being worked on even if it doesn't seem that way!