In my opinion (I run Beryl on my desktop) from the users perspective, compiz is a good default choice over Beryl. I have yet to see any discussion from the beryl crowd, with technical merits, as to why beryl is superior. Nor have I seen why the beryl crowd couldn’t release their changes as plugins to compiz.
If there is something I want to toy around with, sure I use Beryl because I am able to figure out issues when they arise. If I had to recommend one for 99% of the users, it would be compiz. This is not taking anything away from Beryl, as choice is a good thing, and can only spur further innovation.
 ”Beryl includes temporary solutions and workarounds that paper over issues in the overall infrastructure. I’ve been very unwilling to include such things in compiz as I believe that it hurts the open source desktop as it hides the real issues and I don’t want to do that for my own projects benefit. Helping other projects by fixing issues where they should be fixed is how we make the open source desktop unbeatable. Temporary solutions can be maintained outside the official tree or in branches for those who need them.”
For a reference: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/compiz/2007-February/001413.htmlÂ
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#1 by felipe on February 28, 2007 - 6:52 pm
I completely agreed with you (except I run Compiz)
The really sad part of the story is the false belief that David Reveman constantly rejects every change coming from the outside. Simply not true, and a quick crawl into the Compiz ML archives can confirm that
Thank you for this post, Steven
#2 by Francis Giannaros on February 28, 2007 - 7:05 pm
I tend to generally agree. What’s very sad is that Raveman also appears to be making quite an effort for some collaboration and that the Beryl developers in a few cases appear to not care. At least, that’s what the post on the ML above implies.
Every Beryl plugin I’ve tried so far seems to work pretty well with Compiz, too.
#3 by Jo Shields on February 28, 2007 - 8:53 pm
The sad thing is, Compiz simply doesn’t work. I’ve tried it on my three Feisty systems, and on all of them, it fails miserably to do anything useful, either crashing or displaying things flat-out wrong. Beryl is unstable and kludgy, but it “works”. The “desktop-effects” button in Feisty is largely useless as a result – if three completely different machines can’t use it, who does it help?
#4 by Meneer R on February 28, 2007 - 10:52 pm
Same thing here. Compiz is buggy as hell (no borders, weird crashes, etc.) and Beryl works and is stable.
Beryl also manages to take care of a lot more details than Compiz does.
Details that perhaps belong with the DE instead of the WM.
Perhaps Beryl and Compiz are best compared to Ubuntu and Debian.
Ubuntu contains all kinds of temporary hacks that make it work _now_.
Debian sticks to patches that will keep the code maintainable and fix the actual problem.
Unfortunately for both Debian and Compiz, it takes a whole lot longer to find the actual cause of certain bugs. It takes a whole lot longer for a bug to be fixed if you the ‘clean fix’ is a complete redesign.
So, from a user’s perspective, Compiz crashes and Beryl doesn’t.
From a user’s perspective, if they want to tweak, they can tweak more with Beryl.
From a user’s perspective you would use Beryl. Don’t give the over the top configuration-manager though: just let them choose between standard profiles (say: ‘minimal’ – ‘human’ – ‘pimp’). Perhaps with a big ‘edit advanced settings’ button. Much like the theme manager works in gnome.
Also, one HUGE plus for Beryl is that Compiz is gnome-centric. Beryl is DE independent. From a distrution, that has to support and maintain more than one DE (like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.) it makes much more sense to have 1 beryl, instead of 3 different compiz.
Likewise I see a social parrelel. Ubuntu stealed ‘Debian’, Beryl stealed ‘Compiz’. Yet both were started because they had different directions and priorities than the original project.
The only group i’ve heard badmouthing though is the Compiz’ bunch. Much like the Debian people dissed Ubuntu. It is this social behavior that really shows why people fork and do their own thing. Hell, if I were ever to meet any person with a ‘fuck some-other-distro’ .. t-shirt I would know I’m going to the wrong places and hanging with the wrong people.
#5 by mindwarp on March 1, 2007 - 12:50 am
I think these last 2 comments are missing a key item: You are using compiz, in feisty, which is unstable. Please understand that. Feisty is not fit for normal users currently.
#6 by Jo Shields on March 1, 2007 - 2:12 am
I’ve been attempting to use compiz packages, official and unofficial, in every Ubuntu release since the project first materialized. It’s never been a happy exercise for me
#7 by thebluesgnr on March 1, 2007 - 5:17 am
Would you mind posting your system configuration?
Also, please try to file bug reports with as much information as you can provide.
#8 by sb on March 1, 2007 - 6:01 am
Remember that Reveman developed XGL/Compiz completely in private. Like it or not, that’s the single biggest reason that Aiglx and Beryl exist today.
Personally, I find that Beryl is easier to set up and configure. It is also intended to be used by all DEs, not just Gnome. And nobody from the Beryl team has ever tried to vandalize the Compiz website. That’s why I like Beryl better nowadays.
But, I’m a pragmatist. IF Beryl stagnates while Compiz can gets its act together and puts out a really polished, generic environment, I’ll certainly change my mind.
#9 by textureglitch on March 1, 2007 - 10:40 am
I would agree with your position on Compiz, but only from what I’ve read everywhere else.
Everyone says Compiz is more stable and works better, and I’m sure they have good reasons for saying that, but they are reasons that are still very unclear to me.
Every single Compiz install I’ve tried has failed miserably. I simply *cannot* get it working. I’ve tried on Kubuntu Dapper (nvidia), Kubuntu Edgy (nvidia), Ubuntu Edgy laptop (ATI), Ubuntu Edgy 64-bit (ATI), no dice.
Beryl just works. I’m running 0.1.4 on Kubuntu Edgy and 0.2.whatever SVN versions on everything else. True, Beryl stops working entirely with every alternate SVN update, but I’ve found a stable version and stopped updating it on my workstation now.
Maybe it’s the quality of the howtos, I don’t know. I’ve had plenty of problems with Beryl, but I’ve always been able to find a solution by googling for it.
I’ve also not been able to get AIGLX working on any platform, so all of this has been using XGL. As far as I can tell from forums and such, using AIGLX with an ATI card is just asking for trouble.
#10 by penter on March 1, 2007 - 12:43 pm
Haha. I didn’t know Ubuntu was full of “temporary hacks”… and last i checked Ubuntu sends patches back to upstream.
Sorry but the parallel with Beryl doesn’t stand
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#11 by Matteo Scotuzzi on March 4, 2007 - 6:18 pm
@sb: it’s sad reading your words…
This phrase:
>Remember that Reveman developed XGL/Compiz completely in private. Like it or not, that’s the single biggest reason that Aiglx and Beryl exist today.
has to be corrected like this:
“Remember that Reveman developed XGL/Compiz completely in private. Like it or not, that’s the single biggest reason that a usable/wonderful/3d/eye candy desktop exist today”
in fact the whole project was initialy born into the community but sadly it lacked of interest. Only at this point Reveman has taken the project and developed it (really fast) with the promise to give back the results to the community. And he has respected the promise giving back something tryable and enjoyable that gathered the interest of the community. Probably is thanks to Reveman that Linux can be on time (in advance?) with the other desktop-oriented operative system.
>And nobody from the Beryl team has ever tried to vandalize the Compiz website.
do you have any evidence?
that’s a good phrase to kill the soul of the whole community…
#12 by Eleazar on March 8, 2007 - 5:32 am
@Matteo Scotuzzi:
http://forum.go-compiz.org/viewtopic.php?t=621
Sad but true.
@sb: I wonder, if you were a Compiz fanboy what stupid thing you would have already commented about something like this?:
http://forum.beryl-project.org/viewtopic.php?t=5 (Post #7)
>Remember that Reveman developed XGL/Compiz >completely in private. Like it or not, that’s the single >biggest reason that Aiglx and Beryl exist today.
Biggest reason?… XD, that would be a very sad/stupid biggest reason.
Seriously man, fanboys like you give free/opensource software enthusiasts a bad name, Google/Wikipedia are there for a reason, USE THEM!
All I have to say is: Time will tell
PD: Yo pongo mis reales en Compiz/Xegl, me arriesgo bastante con Xegl, ¿Pero se puede soñar no?… ¿Y ustedes?