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Blog.phpwnage > Maybe it's time... A blog by Kevin Lange, UIUC Class of 2013
  Maybe it's time... Apr 4, 2009 - klange  
  Maybe it's finally time we put some serious consideration into a Compiz Desktop Environment. With GNOME pretty much throwing us aside on support and with KWin replicating our features left and right, it's hard to stay on board. This all comes on top of the numerous issues we've always had with the two big ones.
So, I figure it's time we look a bit bigger. As 0.9.0 starts to build back to the status of 0.8.* in plugins, we should look at things we need to build a solid, effect-filled DE. Sam mentioned the possibility of forking GNOME, but do we really want to go that route? I can see the backend systems in GNOME being reused in the "CompDE", but I don't see us forking their panel and desktop: we don't need to. Compiz has always been an add-on to existing DEs, and we need to consider that: We can build the basics, we already have. We have numerous panels, and we're working on a deskop. The rest is integration systems.

Hm. I'm limited on time here, so I need to wrap it up. I'll try and make a more suitable argument later when I have time.


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JakeDTH Dude, I use GNOME exclusively. And I use Compiz everyday, without Compiz I would have to use Metacity's compositing feature, but I can't do without Compiz. I remember when I got my new nVidia card, and nVidia didn't have GNU/Linux driver support yet, I couldn't hardly get any work done.

If anything, you should _not_ move Compiz to KDE, like you said "with KWin replicating our features left and right" KDE is the one you should drop. Make Compiz the KWin of GNOME, follow GNOME's user friendly development rules, and no matter what they say, keep it going, until the GNOME people realize that Metacity isn't nearly as good as Compiz, and begin to support. Remember GNOME developers are picky and restrictive to that makes it in to GNOME, for good reasons, I wouldn't want to see GNOME become KDE 4.0. They will take a long time to adopt it.
smspillaz I only mentioned forking gnome-shell, not all of GNOME. GNOME isn't interdependent on shell, so this could be done.

However, even forking shell, let along maintaining our own DE will be problematic. Remember that we have like what, 5 developers? And we all have full time jobs/school/university? We barely have enough time to maintain the compiz stack, let alone our own DE. (I barely have enough time to get all my homework done these days!)

Unless one of us wins the lottery, gets a job with google/redhat/canonical/novell or we put a 'donate' button on our site and we end up getting over $5m, somehow I doubt whether this would be physically possible.

I'd hate to see compiz locked out of GNOME due to some silly little design desicion, but the GNOME guy's are basically telling me 'Compiz sucks, nobody cares about you, users never cared about you'. Which is completely wrong. Oh well, if people want to use compiz, they will have to use KDE/QT. GNOME's loss.
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