I'd like to ask the Ubuntu developer community to consider freeing up valuable CD space by removing Compiz and just using Mutter (Metacity 3) compositing in the default installation for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Lucid Lynx. From what i have read, the core of Metacity is a lot better than that of Compiz, but some work is needed first to avoid making the change a regression. While Metacity does still lack the huge amount of features available through Compiz plugins, only the few basic essential ones are needed anyways. Extra effects using Compiz can still be easily installed just like everyone did before it came prepackaged with Ubuntu. Once Metacity compositing does everything that Compiz does under the "Normal" Desktop Effects setting in Ubuntu's appearance preferences, then we'll have reached the feature parity we need.
Metacity provides a number of benefits over Compiz. It doesn't depend on accelerated graphics so users that don't have the necessary hardware and drivers for Compiz can still use it and enjoy the applications which require compositing, although it would be nice if Metacity was able to take advantage of accelerated graphics. This does make it ever so slightly more CPU intensive than necessary for users with decent 3D drivers, but it is less resource intensive as a whole, and for the majority of users, the memory consumption is what they notice when Compiz is enabled.
Unlike Compiz, Metacity is actually standards compliant, so it doesn't malfunction when using certain applications. A smooth and consistent desktop shouldn't have any of that. Compiz deviates from the Unix philiosophy and, as Dylan McCall posted to the Ubuntu developer discussion list, many of "Compiz's effects are entirely out of scope for a window manager and rely on horrible, kludgey, unsightly workarounds. All of Metacity's effects are in scope and only exist if they're going to work consistently. Everything else, for example fancy window previews on the window list applet, can and should be implemented by the individual child applications."
He adds that switching between Compiz and Metacity produces an inconsistent user interface which is pronounced by the fact that depending on your hardware setup, Ubuntu will fall back onto Metaicty if it can't enable Compiz:
Metacity provides a number of benefits over Compiz. It doesn't depend on accelerated graphics so users that don't have the necessary hardware and drivers for Compiz can still use it and enjoy the applications which require compositing, although it would be nice if Metacity was able to take advantage of accelerated graphics. This does make it ever so slightly more CPU intensive than necessary for users with decent 3D drivers, but it is less resource intensive as a whole, and for the majority of users, the memory consumption is what they notice when Compiz is enabled.
Unlike Compiz, Metacity is actually standards compliant, so it doesn't malfunction when using certain applications. A smooth and consistent desktop shouldn't have any of that. Compiz deviates from the Unix philiosophy and, as Dylan McCall posted to the Ubuntu developer discussion list, many of "Compiz's effects are entirely out of scope for a window manager and rely on horrible, kludgey, unsightly workarounds. All of Metacity's effects are in scope and only exist if they're going to work consistently. Everything else, for example fancy window previews on the window list applet, can and should be implemented by the individual child applications."
He adds that switching between Compiz and Metacity produces an inconsistent user interface which is pronounced by the fact that depending on your hardware setup, Ubuntu will fall back onto Metaicty if it can't enable Compiz:
...users get confused when they switch between Compiz and Metacity, because the two have profoundly different feels, and in some cases different key bindings. Metacity uses workspaces, while default Compiz uses viewports (and a different number, if I remember right). One follows the extended window manager hints spec to precision, another has quirks.
Because of that, switching the window manager should not be considered standard operation. I definitely don't think it is acceptable to dump it as a prominently displayed option as if it is something user friendly to do.Dylan brings the future of Gnome into consideration as well:
One obvious next step in GNOME's evolution as a desktop environment is the more rigid integration of the window manager with everything else. For example, GNOME-Shell is based on a heavily modified Metacity. In the future a lot of cool stuff will depend on Metacity (or whatever it comes to be called later on). It would be a shame to miss it.Overall, Metacity is actually prettier, gives the desktop a smoother feel, provides better consistency, and takes up less system resources making Ubuntu feel faster, but some work is still needed before Compiz could be dropped. Can we commit to making this a long-term goal and put it on the roadmap?
agree, it shouldnt be in the distro. Its easily downloadable to add it.
ReplyDeleteI would like to look more posts like this .
DeleteI also agree.
ReplyDeleteMetacity compositing doesn't have anywhere near feature parity with compiz. Not that it matters as GNOME 3 will be in 10.04 anyway with gnome-shell pushing out compiz. If I were you I'd do my homework before calling for changes.
ReplyDeleteI thought they were keeping Compiz anyways... no? Either way, this should enlighten people about the little known compositing abilities of Metacity
ReplyDeleteI'll take your word for bit but either way, my call was less for change and more for developers to focus on getting Metacity near feature parity with "Normal" Compiz (the default effects setting in Ubuntu).
ReplyDeleteJust thought I might drop a line. Compiz and Mutter have almost the same hardware requirements to perform their compositing. Mutter uses clutter, which does have a software rendering fallback, however you REALLY dont want to see that in action for a full screen app. (try running UNR in a VM without enabling GPU pass through to see what I mean).
ReplyDeleteCurrently, mutter is not a viable replacement to compiz/metacity, and having used all three Compiz is still the window manager of choice for me. Admittedly I dont use any of the "wildly out of scope" stuff because it's wildly out of scope. Also from the sounds of it, 10.04 will still be GNOME 2 house, and 10.10 will be GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell and all that jazz.
Great post, I hope somebody hears ya!
ReplyDeleteYou should post your idea on brainstorm.
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience as a KWin developer. You can't take away the users their cube. Actually that was one of the reasons why KWin has a cube implementation: users told us that they can't use KWin as long as there is no cube.
ReplyDeleteGiven the user group Ubuntu is targeting I doubt that it is a good idea to take away the fancy effects.
And another experience from KWin: adding compositing to an exisiting window manager takes time. There is lots which can be optimized. Mutter will have it's first release now. KWin waited one year till we activated compositing by default. I don't know where Mutter stands currently but I doubt that it is as optimized and stable in the compositing field as Compiz. Remember that you have to support it for three years. (Which could become a problem with Compiz as well, if GNOME Shell kills Compiz).
You have no idea what you are talking about. Please stop wasting everyone's time and making a fool out of yourself.
ReplyDeleteHow can you mention "Unix philosophy" while talking about metacity/gnome/compiz/... ?
ReplyDeleteTo the anonymous saying that Gnome 3/ gnome-shell will push out Compiz in 10.04: There's no sign of that. Gnome-shell will be available, but not default by any stretch of the imagination. Have you tried gnome-shell by building with jhbuild at all? If you do, you'll see it's not exactly ready for the mainstream...
ReplyDeleteFew points here, some already mentioned but I just want to roll them all up into one post:
ReplyDelete1) Mutter compositing requires the same or higher 3D acceration when compared to compiz. Some of this may be a lack of optimizations but I have a feeling a lot of it is just due to the fact that they use a full scenegraph for their implementation (clutter).
2) Mutter will almost certainly never have as many effects as compiz or even as many as the default Ubuntu configuration for compiz. Metacity, even in the composited/gnome-shell age, is the Cheerios of Window Managers.
3) 10.04 LTS will almost certainly use the same 2.28 version of GNOME we have now with major a couple exceptions for things like empathy so long as they do not depend on any GTK+ 3/GNOME 3 stuff so we'll certainly have compiz in this release.
4) Compiz is actually more likely to kill metacity in Ubuntu the way things are going now. Metacity is becoming 3D only while compiz is gaining support for running without compositing and with 2D XRender compositing (like metacity does now). This work should be ready in time to 10.10 so unless we decide to fully embrace gnome-shell and the GNOME 3 way there I would expect metacity to be kicked off the CD before compiz.
Until Mutter can support:
ReplyDelete-- zooming magnification
-- "ADD Filter" (fade on inactive windows, similar to Mac)
-- Negative filter
-- Scale-switching
-- keyboard shortcuts that use the Super Key (GNOME/Met/Mutter can't)
I consider these an important feature of any composited environment. If a composited environment can't do these, I'd rather go back to using plain old 2D Metacity.
(Note that Scale is wonderful but not necessary. The accessibility features to filter the screen, track the active window, and zoom in are more than just nice - they should have been mandatory two or three years ago).
Compiz has functionality that Metacity (and Mutter, I assume) cannot match and has no alternative for. And I'm not talking about cubes and transparencies and secondary stuff like that.
Just my 2 cents and rant. I'm glad compiz came around and gave us a better looking window manager. Sure there's lots wrong with it, but at the time metacity still had those butt-ugly lines when minimising and maximising. Those did my head in, they belonged well in 1984 my god. So I think just that compiz was around helped metacity developers get their shit together because it was just *yuck* also compiz + enhanced zoom + wii mote = godly
ReplyDeleteI can't help but laugh at the fact that you complain that "Compiz deviates from Unix Philosophy" because "Compiz effects are entirely out of scope of the widnow manager" yet you preach that we should use Mutter because we want "more rigid integration between the window manager and everything else", i.e drawing the panels etc which violates Unix Philosophy even more.
ReplyDeleteDear All,
ReplyDeleteMetacity != Mutter
That is all
Dear nzjrs:
ReplyDeleteMutter = Metacity reformed as a compositing window manager, using Clutter for scene management. It is a direct descendant.
@anonymous who said, "-- keyboard shortcuts that use the Super Key (GNOME/Met/Mutter can't)"
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding me to try that out. Metacity in Karmic most definitely can.
It seems to have been broken for a quite long time either in Gnome or just in Ubuntu. I used Mod4 shortcuts in Debian (and I think Ubuntu) years ago, and at some point they stopped working. Glad to see that is works again.
Sorry but this is now irrelevant. When compiz 0.9 comes out, we will see that GNOME shell is a waste. As we have seen, while we all love GNOME, the devs don't listen, compiz devs do. That's the difference.
ReplyDeleteIt's also why, I, and anyone I help to get ubuntu, will not be forced to use nonsense like gnome shell. I think Canonical and others need to seriously tell the GNOME devs to grow up and stop being bossy, and actual get them to listen to users and what they want.
Open Source != Microsoft.
i think it is sad that gnome is dropping compiz, you mention above that users can still use compiz, this isn't the case the gnome-shell and compiz enabled at the same time results in problems...
ReplyDeletewhile metacity does use less resources it is also somewhat crappy, not nearly as attractive(contrary to what you may think), and is not upto snuff with compiz, not even close! and to suggest otherwise is a laughable joke!
i've been using gnome 3 and i think while some new features are interesting, while other features i am both used and that are extremely handy i no longer have, ditching compiz for mutter is terrible.
we must also remember that compiz is working on it's new release, they may not be as buggy, and may be more optimized...and i know for myself, if i have no choice but to use mutter with gnome, i may ditch gnome all together, after years of use :(
You should ditch gnome if you're forced to out Compiz. Think of the fact Compiz is really what brings new users to Linux, both for looks and features. I am fairly certain Ubuntu will find it difficult keeping users if they no longer support Compiz.
ReplyDeleteI realize that Gnome3 is supposedly great, but what changes did they actually make? I mean think about what changes these people of Kwin and Gnome and stuff actually changed???????? They just copy Compiz or pretend they thought of implimenting features that should've been implimented a LONG LONG time ago. It's rather sad.
Oh well! COMPIZ DIES, LINUX DIES TOO
On some (many?) systems, Compiz performs noticeably better than Metacity w/ compositing. In particular, window preview in the Alt-tab switcher can be pathetic with Metacity.
ReplyDeleteI sorta agree with everyone, but not exactly. What needs 2 happen here is INTEGRATION. What I have experienced is that compiz and metacity both are causing errors, conflicts, crashes and user confusion. why not roll up the both of them into 1 seamless desktop manager with all the cool effects like cube and wobbly windows etc, but write them into a single settings manager that is for Ubuntu. I hate saying this but it needs 2 be said-do it like windows did, instead of taking pieces of programs and finding a way to make them work together, take the ideas that everyone loves about them and INTEGRATE them (re-write the code) into Ubuntu-for Ubuntu (and its other flavors)?
ReplyDeleteCompiz functionality (and speed) is not matched by mutter+gnome shell. Grid, zooming, group windows... the list goes on.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, gnome-shell steps backwards when compared with current panel when you consider applets, configurability, looks...
The way I see it. If gnome-shell/mutter turns out to be mandatory to use gnome... Bye-bye gnome... Lets find another DE. Thats just my opinion, ofcourse.
Well, then put the farking compiz effects in a WM that does it then. END USERS don't care how it works, just that it does.
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ReplyDeleteOne obvious next step in GNOME's evolution as a desktop environment is the more rigid integration of the window manager with everything else. For example, GNOME-Shell is based on a heavily modified Metacity. In the future a lot of cool stuff will depend on Metacity (or whatever it comes to be called later on). It would be a shame to miss it.
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ReplyDeleteIt's also why, I, and anyone I help to get ubuntu, will not be forced to use nonsense like gnome shell. I think Canonical and others need to seriously tell the GNOME devs to grow up and stop being bossy, and actual get them to listen to users and what they want. คอนโด ขายคอนโด ซื้อคอนโด
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ReplyDeleteCurrently, having both on disk seems a better option than only having one.Standards compliant or not, this seems to be working for the majority of people that use it or it would be so popular that they included it with the distro.
ReplyDeleteThe reason it isn't standards compliant is the same reason it is far faster than metacity (see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_desktop_managers1&num=3)whilst still providing a framework for plugins, and refusing to give a new user the choice in my eyes follows the FOSS philosophy much less than a non standards compliant, occasionally buggy but beautiful window manager.
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ReplyDeleteHe adds that switching between Compiz and Metacity produces an inconsistent user interface which is pronounced by the fact that depending on your hardware setup, Ubuntu will fall back onto Metaicty if it can't enable Compiz: reise
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