Beryl - Merge is On with Compwiz

[schivmeister]

Ubuntu

Hmm..

Let's see. The user-base of Desktop computers running Linux grew by quite a significant number after Ubuntu got into the game. The keyword here is Ubuntu, not any other distribution. Many challenges faced by the Linux community were taken up by Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth, being the high-flying man he is, may have been planning something big - not something to "donate" to the community.

We would not have gotten the recognition we do now, if not for Ubuntu. Face it. Ubuntu was, is and will be meant to be a "n00b" distribution, with the assumption that the general mass fall into that category. Take note, general mass; non-UNIX (less MAC OS). The ideologies of the Linux community is to have choice, have freedom. World-domination by a single distribution would be frowned upon in general, because what we want is only world-domination by OSS AND FS; something that would lay down choices and allow freedom to exist. With a slight doubt, Cannonical may be fighting towards the former type of domination, with the help of Ubuntu. I'm not so sure about Novell, but I know Red Hat is not of that sort. In order to win over the mass and introduce OSS and FS, a distribution has to be as n00b-friendly as possible.

Bottomline, Ubuntu is a revolutionary Linux distribution, whether you like it or not. Cannonical is another matter, and the intention of that company and a certain rich man is suspicious. However, I would like to thank Mr Shuttleworth for introducing Ubuntu. Linux got a headstart because of him, so preventing a certain disaster from happening will not be difficult. One other thing which bothers me, why is Ubuntu not crediting Debian anymore? Why is there no trace of Debian in any of its introductory "marketing"? I don't like the idea of growing up and dumping your parents when you no longer need them. At least aknowledge them. Whatever references to Debian Ubuntu is making, appears insignificant to say the least.

Compiz and Beryl

Alright. This is it. The main attraction. Eye-candy = the winner. The reason for the fork is obvious. Compiz was a big project, and Quinn's ideas were anything but professional and useful. Quinn started out as just a user and developer, no? That's the fact. That's the way the Compiz team chose to look at them. A fork? They didn't think it would be a cause for concern.

Soon after Beryl received a lot of attention and stole part of Compiz's limelight, they (Novell/Compiz) finally began to realise they made a mistake. A merge would further benefit everyone, because then Compiz by itself would be even greater with the achievements of the ex-Beryl project now a part of its "big idea".

To choose Ubuntu as a showcase platform should not be seen as a surprising move. It's an obvious solution. Rising star. Merge, become one big successful eye-candy provider, support a revolutionary distribution ranking #1 in popularity, and you have a splendid dish. Now, the aims of Quinn and Beryl are good to go. They are part of the Linux community, to give Linux with its beauty to the world is their goal. The goals of Compiz, however, looking at Novell, can be debatable. Personally, I think Novell/Compiz is more on the good/community side.

"Official Beryl Distribution" - That's the thing most of you like about SabayonLinux. A sense of pride. Right? So now, you begin to question that pride without Sabayon being the only official Beryl distribution. Since many of you dislike the Ubuntu community for its 90% n00b majority, the idea of Beryl merging and then supporting Ubuntu big-time calls for strong feelings and, strong words.

[R3MF]

"Official Beryl Distribution" - That's the thing most of you like about SabayonLinux. A sense of pride. Right? So now, you begin to question that pride without Sabayon being the only official Beryl distribution. Since many of you dislike the Ubuntu community for its 90% n00b majority, the idea of Beryl merging and then supporting Ubuntu big-time calls for strong feelings and, strong words.

this is the best thing about it in my opinion.

If Shuttleworth can kick and punch the beryl crew into releasing something stable in order that it should reliably work for Ubuntu n00bs, then beryl might actually be something that i want to use.

If the compiz merge provides beryl the solid architectural foundations that allows a solid product to emerge, rather than a nasty collection of hacks, i will once again be delighted.

beryl/quinn/and crew have provided an enormous service to us users by pushing the boundaries of what a composited desktop can do, far faster than compiz would have achieved, congratulations, but now its time to grow up.

[davemc]

Nice blast on the Beryl dev's there. I would hardly call beryl in its current form "a collection of hacks". It runs just perfectly on all of my systems (I have many) including my old piece o' junk systems I was about to trash, only on Sabayon though. Im not sure to credit beryl with that or lxnay for making it integrate into his distro, but I do know its very stable on 3.3, loads up every single time, on every single one of the systems, without fail now.


UBUNTU:
It currently runs quite well on Ubuntu if you take the time to install it, (see many many youtube video's of beryl on Ubuntu running quite nicely) but because of Ubuntu's stance on proprietary stuff I guess, it takes alot of effort on the users part, and im not so sure that a beryl partnership would solve that issue as it is philisophical and not technical. Ubuntu is the DW leader currently, but not because it is the "best" distro as I think we all would agree. It is a nice distro, like so many other binary based distro's. Having tried it on multiple systems, it runs as well as Mandriva, SuSe, and Kanotix. It has nothing that distinguishes itself from these in that they all do a great job of hardware detection and autoconfiguration. If anything, SuSe is better because it tends to go a bit farther in the Hardware management department and is quite a bit more aestheticly pleasing. SuSe also has the lead in Emulation/Xen. So why isnt beryl making a deal with Novell?.. Why not Mandriva?.. Why not [insert distro here]?.. Is the way Linux works from distro to distro any different other than source or binary base? Why or how would some deal with Shuttleworth change how beryl gets coded? Sorry, from here it looks like a rush to jump on the bandwagon.

[lowboyblue]

My Thoughts on the subject

First Beryl, since their fork about 8 months ago, they have achieved allot in the areas of compatibility and usability. They have taken Compiz and made it better for everyone. In about the same time frame, I have watched Beryl get adopted for use in many distributions that I doubt would have considered it without Beryl's improvements. It's true Beryl considers Compiz "essentially" their "upstream"; but have you talked to SUSE users lately. I have and allot of them are using Beryl also and not the home teams Compiz. I wonder why.

I have tried to avoid speaking on Ubuntu since this is a Sabayon Forum but here it goes. Ubuntu's success is phenomenal their ease of use, stable release dates and package maintenance is excellent and the reason why so many distributions are based off of Ubuntu. They have done allot to spread the word of GNU/Linux and make it's use newbie friendly. This is no problem for me and I don't think that it will hurt the community to have fresh blood. I believe that some of these newbies will turn around and contribute back to the pool later. As for ease of use being frowned upon, why get mad over it. Ubuntu is still [Debian] GNU/Linux on the inside and it's underlying core can always be tapped. No one is forcing people to use their product. People are choosing them.

btw have you seen how many newbies are picking up Sabayon ; will you turn on them for that too..
Sure it can be irritating when newbie's refuse to read on their own and want their hand to be held through some of the most basic tasks. But this is something that can be minimized through better documentation, the wiki and a bot on the IRC. [ex. !wireless = http://gentoo-wiki.com/Special:Search?s ... less&go=Go]

I'm still trying not to speculate or bash.

[random guy]

did my post some how get deleted or was it these school computers being stupid again?

anyway ya i said something similar to the above taht i am drawn to ubuntu like i am drawn to sabayon because of the great community. the ubuntu forums are responsive, their bug reporting thing is efficient and organized and there is a lot of documentation. it is kinda like sabayon just focused on stability instead of bleeding edge. both were designed to "just work." and "just work" does not mean noobish.

[davemc]

All distro's should be noob friendly except for those few who claim up front "WARNING WARNING NOT FOR NOOBS"? There are a few of those out there like Gentoo or Slackware, Crux, etc. I would consider Sabayon to be very noob friendly, as I am a noob and get by just fine in it. But that is really besides the point of the discussion as Ubuntu is not really the object here, its more about the logic of what is, or is not, going on with Beryl's possible move to Ubuntu. I really dont think anyone takes issue with thier merge with Compiz as that only made good sense IMO.

[Darksurf]

Ahhh, I remember my blissful Slackware days. It was the first linux distro that I've ever tried and used. I used it for years and it forced me to learn so much. I loved it. I had tried so many other distros and hated them all, mandrake, ubuntu, kubuntu, ice-pack, yellow dog, redhat, gentoo ( i kinda liked it except for gnome and the crappy community and installer that didn't work) , and the list goes on and on. I eventually got a 64-bit computer and wanted to keep slackware, but there was no 64-bit support. So I tried BlueWhite64 and Slamd64 (unofficial slackware 64-bit), but they were 64-bit puritans only allowing 64-bit. I eventually found Sabayon and bam! I went from Slackware to Sabayon.

[random guy]

gentoo ( i kinda liked it except for gnome and the crappy community and installer that didn't work)

what? unless gentoo has changed since i last built it (which was like a year maybe a year and a half ago) there was no automatic installer, you had to build the os from the ground up. so it didnt include any wm, you could install gnome if you wanted to or kde etc.

i also have used a lot of distros, most of which i hated because of poor wireless support but i would have to disagree with some on your list there. i never used slackware for x86 but i did try slackintosh (slackware ppc) and that didnt go so smoothly. took me a lot of different tried before i found yellow dog linux which i have to say was probably the best choice for a ppc ssytem other than maybe gentoo, it did take me a long time to compile and stuff with with that ppc system, gentoo wasnt right for it but i did install it and it did work.

lets see: mandrake, mandriva, ubuntu, gentoo, kanotix, kororaa, kanotix, kubuntu then i think sabayon.

most of those more than once x86 machine, i think i had gentoo like 3 times and kanotix a bunch of times (liked that one back in the day). they were in pretty much that order though.

EDIT: woops totally off topic again. ya merge between them should take the power of beryl and the stability and i guess proforamnce of compez. good idea i guess. i would love to see them work with the kde team a little and see if they and work some of the kde4 apps and eyecandy to work well with beryl, like those widgets better look better than how ugly superkarmba looks with beryl.

[teo]

That's my final word on the subject. I won't be visiting this thread again.

i am fine with that

I stated my opinion

i am fine with that too

and the truth.

not fine with that

proliferation of Ubuntu zombies

i take offense to that.

whether you or anyone else reads this you may have had a bad exprience with ubuntu becasue it didnt work on your computer but it works for many other people, one mans junk is another's treasure. i have a friend who has an intel mac and sabayon doesnt work for him. does that mean sabayon is junk? no it just means it didnt work for him. works for a whole lot of other people though. and i have a kubuntu feisty installation and there are no instances where things are dumbed down, i honestly dont know what your talking about becasue it is regular kde.

linux is about choice, it is ok to give your opinion, i love hearing other people's opinions but when you say your opinion is the only one that is important you might as well work for microsoft. i have turned them down so i know what i am talking about.

Yes but, you see... Ubuntu really sucks. I try it every time a new relase comes out because I want to give everyone a fair chance, and every time I can't resist the urge to remove any trace of Ubuntu from my system to purify it from that monstrosity. The days following the removal I usually keep thinking "who the hell can really be using this sh*t?".
And I think it even hurts the Linux community, because noobs install Ubuntu and say "what a piece of thrash, I better go back to winblows". I know a lot of them myself, and some of them are happy SabayonLinux users now, after I talked them into trying it.
And I'm sick of the evergrowing Ubuntu-asslicking, and attitudes like if it isn't in Ubuntu it isn't worth using!

Generally the Ubuntu community has requested certain features and bug fixes and these have been moved to the top of the priority list.

- i mean, WTF? Top of the priority list? What about everybody who uses a *real* distro and not that winblows-ish trash?

And I still think the Beryl-Compiz merge is a big mistake. We'll be back to square 1. I'm just waiting for a refork

[random guy]

well i hope your not suggesting that since i also use ubuntu i am a noob. i agree that kubuntu looks ugly by default but i totally customize every distro i use whether it be ubuntu, sabayon etc. so it isnt really an obstical for people who know what they are doing.

i dont think you can really compare it to sabayon since it is very different. just like compareing anything to redhat, redhat makes a great server, possibly the best servers (again except maybe base gentoo servers) and sabayon is a desktop distro. and inside desktop distros you got the bleeding edge and you got the ones focused on stability. there are not a lot focused on stability rather than bleeding edge anymore, let ubuntu assume that role since they are so efficient at it. again just look at the organization of the community. i mean it is not the best distro but it does some things right.

And I'm sick of the evergrowing Ubuntu-asslicking, and attitudes like if it isn't in Ubuntu it isn't worth using!

agreed on all fronts. i dont like people just thinking that if it isnt in ubuntu it isnt good but similar across the board in that if it isnt in distro X then Y is not worth having. just a stupid way of thinking about anything.