Desktop eye-candy: Linux vs. Mac vs. Vista

cnayak · #1 12th February 2007, 09:52 AM

I feel the Beryl implementation of desktop effects is way superior to that of OSX and Vista. Both aforementioned operating systems require a fairly beefy computer to run all the fancy eyecandy smoothly. But, I was able to get almost all the features of beryl running on my humble laptop ( Pentium M 1.4 ghz, 512 mb ram, Intel 855 GME adapter), including the fancy cube, live preview of minimized windows, window borders and the wobbly windows (it's practicality is a bit suspect, though). And above all Beryl is highly customisable. I tried Vista on my friends new computer , and it looked pretty good. Of course, he had a high end Dell laptop with a Radeon card. I worked on an emac (running OSX panther) in my college lab about two years ago. It was ofcourse, fairly ahead of its time. But I haven't tried out the new Tiger, so can't comment on it much.All said and done, the eye candy on Linux can actually be used on the average computer. Kudos to the peeps developing Berly! You've beaten Microsoft and Apple in my books.

I guess more experienced users can give informed opinion.

PS: Btw, reverted back to Win XP. Missing the rotating cubes

#2 12th February 2007, 11:35 AM

why you slummin it in XP? :P

as for dektop effects, i turn them off.

teishu · #3 12th February 2007, 01:01 PM

on my XP rig i have turned all effects off.... I think vista has far to much visual stuff, taking up tons of resources (just one reason i refuse to use it,) never tryed mac, but i think Fedora 6 is just nice, no fancy animations etc, but it is nice to look at if you no what i mean. dosen't use many resources either

sailor · #4 12th February 2007, 04:38 PM

Quote:

it's practicality is a bit suspect, though

I agree, I have the ability to run all the fancy stuff...but I don't. My eyes ain't what they used to be...for me a big monitor and big fonts are more important...

Dies · #5 12th February 2007, 05:32 PM

Well, I love Beryl/Compiz, I can't stand "normal" now.

If I had to go back I would..............well I probably would just go back to the normal, blocky, lifeless interface, but I wouldn't like it.

JN4OldSchool · #6 12th February 2007, 05:46 PM

I dont want to go back. Eye candy?...maybe. But it has become an integral part of my computing experience. Things like the window preview by hovering over the taskbar have become so second nature. I can see where yumex is at without having to close the full size browser window. Alt + scrollwheel (making active window transparent) and super + scrollwheel (magnifying active window) get used constantly. I have never been much of a multiple desktop user so I rarely use the cube but it is still nice to have around. Eye candy? No...Not just eye candy. At least not in the sense that a DE is "just" eye candy. Is a DE necessary? No, you could just use a WM like Fluxbox or even just a terminal. But I would call it more than "just" eye candy. Not only is it necessary for Linux to remain competitive with the other OSs but this is the biggest area where we are actually BEATING them! Beryl has done more for bringing linux to the masses in the last 6 months than anything else in the last 10 years combined. Youtube is chock full of Beryl videos, gamer forums are abuzz with what Beryl can do. Someone in here wrote in a post that MS probably has people using Linux to keep abreast of what's going on in the FOSS world. You bet your sweet butt! And I am sure Beryl has them all running scared. Eye candy? Not on your life!

Thetargos · #7 12th February 2007, 07:58 PM

Amen to that, JN4OldShool!!

Indeed, Beryl has made so huge leaps in terms of usability and interactivity. Not even gDesklets did what it has done (appart from being a resource hog... The gDekslets, I mean).

You can see what in Beryl was inspired by OSX and what was brand new. I only wish that its control panel gets clean enough as to warrant it to be included as the default Desktop Effects manager for the nex releases of Fedora (which is not being considered basically due to its configuration utility being all cluttered and unclean, the newer one is a LOT cleaner than the 0.1.x was, but it is still not perfect).

cnayak · #8 13th February 2007, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3006828

why you slummin it in XP? :P

as for dektop effects, i turn them off.

I actually have to work on a lot of proprietary formats that are Windows-exclusive. And Crossover couldn't run all of the packages. Plus, my college computer peeps, in all their infinite wisdom, have purchased only Windows based licenses for those softwares. Anyhoo, I've set aside some free space to re-install FC sometime later.

And I never meant "eye-candy" in a pejorative way. Sure, beryl adds a lot of functionality to the standard desktop. And whats wrong with the occasional over-indulgence

? Never hurts anyone.

Btw, the system requirements of Vista are pretty steep. The hardware industry guys must be rubbing their hands in glee. And while I'm at it, Mac OSX may be very elegant and beautiful but I quickly grew bored of it. There's little, if any, scope to customize the UI. Actually Windows scores better than apple in this regard. Plus, the Apple is way overpriced (atleast in India, the markup is atleast 20% in most cases) for the masses.

RupertPupkin · #9 13th February 2007, 02:00 AM

You young whippersnappers today are so spoiled, with your fancy Beryl and Compiz, your high-falutin' "mice", and your Pac-Man video games. In my day, we used punch cards and Wyse text terminals with a big amber phosphor font, and we LIKED it.

AlexThomson_NZ · #10 13th February 2007, 02:21 AM

Yeah it's surprising how quickly you become reliant on the features Beryl offers- at work where I am stuck using Ubuntu without Beryl I keep trying to activate zoom and scale before I realise "damn can't do that here!"

Raven-sb · #11 13th February 2007, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RupertPupkin

You young whippersnappers today are so spoiled, with your fancy Beryl and Compiz, your high-falutin' "mice", and your Pac-Man video games. In my day, we used punch cards and Wyse text terminals with a big amber phosphor font, and we LIKED it.

Ah the good ol' days when men were men and montiors were monotone CRT's. When a 10 meg Hard Drive was considered huge, and a meg of ram unheard of. When mice were critters the cat ate, and a GUI something that happened when you dropped glue.

I remember those days..... God I'm glad they're gone. LONG LIVE BERYL

cnayak · #12 13th February 2007, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raven-sb

Ah the good ol' days when men were men and montiors were monotone CRT's. When a 10 meg Hard Drive was considered huge, and a meg of ram unheard of. When mice were critters the cat ate, and a GUI something that happened when you dropped glue.

I remember those days..... God I'm glad they're gone. LONG LIVE BERYL

I surely miss the old days of computing. My first tryst with Linux was with Redhat 7, i guess. It had a sweet little game in which you had to swat a Bill Gates-lookalike

. But, I miss DOS and a weird programming language LOGO, the most. *sigh*

And Mac OSX is absolutely cold and lifeless (but very beautiful - like Steely Dan's "Aja"). How do people manage with the same UI for years? I almost always change the theme and icons (both in Linux and Windows) every week.

Thetargos · #13 13th February 2007, 06:38 AM

Speaking of eye-candy and Beryl and stuff... Does anyone know how to modify the placement of the different elements of the title bar in Emerald? It is not as easy as it is with Metacity (albeit you have to open the gconf-editor). I want to have the close and minimize buttons to the left, then the title, then the icon and then the maximize button (that's the way it is in Metacity). With such distribution of the buttons I really feel comfortable, and have been missing that arrengement ever since I started using Compiz and later Beryl, anyone has a clue?

Edit
Nevermind, just found out where to change these options (yay!)

Thecowking · #14 1st March 2007, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raven-sb

Ah the good ol' days when men were men and montiors were monotone CRT's. When a 10 meg Hard Drive was considered huge, and a meg of ram unheard of. When mice were critters the cat ate, and a GUI something that happened when you dropped glue.

I remember those days..... God I'm glad they're gone. LONG LIVE BERYL

*looks at his Toshiba-3100 quietly churning away in the corner*

Whaddaya mean, good ol' days? Years of work left in this machine, and it's still got 4 megs of HDD space left, what more could you want?

pparks1 · #15 1st March 2007, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexThomson_NZ

Yeah it's surprising how quickly you become reliant on the features Beryl offers- at work where I am stuck using Ubuntu without Beryl I keep trying to activate zoom and scale before I realise "damn can't do that here!"

It is possible to run Beryl on Ubuntu. Just wanted to make that clear for anybody who might misread your post thinking that Ubuntu couldn't do it. Maybe it's your corporate policy, video card or configuration at work under Ubuntu which won't allow Beryl.

I like the ability to fade windows, I like the window rollup feature (double click the title bar) and I like the right corner (Mac EXPOSE like) functionality which tiles all of my open windows.