I recently had to reinstall Ubuntu Edgy and, tragic as it might seem, the thing I was most bothered about getting going again as quickly as possible was the Beryl/Emerald OpenGL accelerated desktop that I had spent (literally) hours getting running before the reinstall.
A lot of people seem to be a bit sniffy about Beryl and Compiz, and to be honest I was one of them before I tried it, because they don't really do anything for you in terms of productivity. In fact they're anti-productive: I often find myself just minimising and closing windows, or swapping desktops, just to watch the effects - it makes me smile. Yes, I know, it's pathetic, but computers should be fun as well as useful shouldn't they, if you want them to be?
Apple seem to think so. I'm convinced that a huge number of people choose Macs just because of the wacky ways windows appear, or their nice screen savers and window designs; nothing to do with freedom from viruses or them 'just working' (I don't believe that anyway - I think it's equally true of Windows, though it grieves me to say it).
Anyway, now I've got Beryl working again. I don't think I could go back to the default Metacity desktop now I've used Beryl for a while; it just seems so dull (sorry Metacity developers - I loved it until I used Beryl). So, I'm really happy... and unproductive.
No comments:
Post a Comment