Windows Vista Aero Vs Linux Ubuntu Beryl

[Gawain of Orkeny]

LINK

[Husar]

And how exactly will this improve my gaming experience in Linux?

This just shows how hate can inspire people, I've got nothing against Linux, but it is complicated and doesn't run my games properly while it may be perfect for an office computer. Despite that, my resident Linux-using friend Xiahou hates superfluous optical enhancements anyway and I thought so did a lot of other people as well.

[caravel]

And how exactly will this improve my gaming experience in Linux?

It wasn't claiming to improve "gaming experience". I didn't see gaming mentioned. When it comes to gaming, Windows is not the best option, it is the only option due to the hardware industry, gaming industry, and more importantly Ms and DirectX.

This just shows how hate can inspire people, I've got nothing against Linux, but it is complicated and doesn't run my games properly while it may be perfect for an office computer.

I'm sorry but that is just not correct at all. Compiz-Beryl is not a "hate inspired" project, it is undoubtedly an eye candy project, but is not some kind of anti windows conspiracy. I don't understand where this mindset comes from that everything related to Linux is some kind of hateful challenge to Windows or an attempt to somehow better windows.

The person who recorded that video clip obviously was anti microsoft, but the actual demo of Compiz-Beryl was genuinely showing off it's capabilities, and as far as eye candy is concerned it's well ahead of Windows' GUI - and free.

Also Linux may appear complicated for you, as the long term experienced windows user that I assume you to be, but not for Linux users. At the end of the day it probably won't run your games at all but no one is forcing Linux on anyone.

Despite that, my resident Linux-using friend Xiahou hates superfluous optical enhancements anyway and I thought so did a lot of other people as well.

That's the big difference between Linux and Windows, if I don't want that bloated 3D GUI, or anything else for that matter, I simply don't install it in the first place. XP and now vista ships with a bloated GUI preinstalled that then has to be disabled and replaced with the slightly less bloated one.

You wouldn't believe how many people install Linux for the first time just to get Beryl, it does prove that eye candy desktops are a major pulling factor for an OS. Personally I wouldn't touch it and my PC is probably too old to run it decently anyway.

-Edit: Another thing to note is that Beryl is not dependent on Ubuntu as the thread titles suggests but runs on any Linux and Pc that meets the requirements.

[BDC]

Windows is better for the normal user. Costs real money though.

Linux is good for people who like command lines. And I know lots of people who do, worryingly.

[Blodrast]

Windows is better for the normal user. Costs real money though.

Linux is good for people who like command lines. And I know lots of people who do, worryingly.

... and, if you had watched that clip, you would have noticed it was about anything BUT command lines. You DID notice that it showed a kick-ass super-eye-candy GUI for a linux distro, right ?
If you like command line, you can have that.
If you like super-eye-candy, you can have that (better than windows, imo - but ymmv).

If you want a 2G GUI, you can have that. If you want a 100k GUI, you can have that. Hell, you can have the source code, and tweak it yourself (and it's about as complicated as it is to edit some of the MTW/RTW/M2TW's text files).

People's tastes are different, 'cause people are different. With linux, you can pick and choose whatever suits your fancy. With windows, you get what Gates shoves down your throat, like it or not.

Yes, I know. Linux doesn't run games.


edit: Why is it worrying you that people like command lines ?
And the fact that linux is all about command lines, I'm afraid is a stereotype that's been perpetuated by the people who saw their last version of a linux distro around 1994...

[BDC]

Yes, but to get that working you will have had to wrestle with it. Something won't work, be it your graphics card, sound card, WIFI, etc. I know Linux has come on a long way, and Vista is hardly a smooth ride with driver issues, but you still need a lot of time and knowledge to get Linux running that well.

[Beirut]

I don't see what the huhbub is all about...

I thought the song was great.

[caravel]

If you want a 2G GUI, you can have that. If you want a 100k GUI, you can have that. Hell, you can have the source code, and tweak it yourself (and it's about as complicated as it is to edit some of the MTW/RTW/M2TW's text files).

The open source nature is a good point. If a bug appears in any GNU/Linux software it is likely that the community (something else windows doesn't have) will patch it very quickly and you'll be able to fix it yourself before your distro developers even release a fix. What's more the developers will cooperate with the community, not simply ignore them and let them "get what they're given". For Ms software you'll be waiting for a service pack or hotfix for quite some time. And when the hotfix is applied you'll have no idea what it's doing to your OS or what extra crapware (such as WGA) it's installing.

People's tastes are different, 'cause people are different. With linux, you can pick and choose whatever suits your fancy. With windows, you get what Gates shoves down your throat, like it or not.

Yes, I know. Linux doesn't run games.

Unfortunately the arguments of, "it doesn't run games", "it's too complicated" (translated: It's not windows XP and I have to use a command prompt which is yucky old stuff), the programs I want won't run on it. etc etc etc seem to outweigh the fact that it's: free, very stable, constantly updated, comes in many forms, has masses and masses of free software apps available, is much more secure and better for webservers etc etc. Oh and did I mention that it's free?

edit: Why is it worrying you that people like command lines ?
And the fact that linux is all about command lines, I'm afraid is a stereotype that's been perpetuated by the people who saw their last version of a linux distro around 1994...

I agree. The command line is vital in a UNIX/Linux based OS. And personally I see nothing wrong with that. Windows user have been conditioned to see the command line as antiquated and very DOS/Win9x. Win9x was criticised for having DOS running in the background (a tiny bit of 8 bit code taking up hardly any memory at all) yet it seems ok for NT generation OS's to hog tons of memory and run many unnecessary processes. The bash shell is very powerful indeed and gives the user much greater control over the OS that they don't have with NT3.x - 6.x.

[Husar]

Caravel, thanks for your explanations, but I wasn't that serious when I said hate-inspired. Though I thought this was some official promotion video for that interface.
And yes, I actually wanted to try it for the eyecandy.
Maybe that's also why I like to play demos of games, I can see the eyecandy of a game that doesn't always interest me otherwise.
What I kind of like about Vista is that the eyecandy doesn't make using your computer any more difficult, the buttons etc are almost all the same as before, they just look better now. Then again, that is why paying just to get Vista is not really such a good idea, ok, you get built-in speech recognition and a few other minor new features, but they didn't reinvent the wheel, which, then again, is quite appreciated, because I like that wheel.

[doc_bean]

Is this a new version of Ubuntu which incorporates a newer kernel ? I have Kubuntu Breezy which doesn't really like my motherboard....

[caravel]

Well with Breezy Badger (Ubuntu 5.10) you're quite a bit behind the times. You've missed, Dapper Drake Ubuntu (6.06 LTS) and Edgy Eft (Ubuntu - 6.10). Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu - 7.04) will be out next month so if you were going to upgrade you could wait for that, or go for Edgy which is very stable now. There have been a lot of newer kernel versions since then, which kernel do you use? I always install the latest K7 kernel, straight off when installing a distro the do sudo apt-get update.

[Xiahou]

I just spent the last day or so playing with Mandriva2007. I tried out compiz- jiggly windows, 3D cube, ect. It was neat, but pretty pointless seeming to me and sometimes even a tad annoying- I turned it off. The KDE desktop already looks so clean and well organized that I didn't want to mess it up.

I'm sure many already know this, but it can be significantly harder to get ATI drivers loaded in linux than nvidia ones (which are fairly painless)... Getting the ATI drivers installed so I could use compiz was more trouble than it was worth in itself, but they were also necessary for any gaming I was going to do, so I guess it made a good first test to use compiz.

[caravel]

Beryl is not my thing. Pointless cosmetics in an OS just don't interest me. I never even use desktop wallpapers so a 3D desktop with irritating effects would be very off putting. I've never even tried it and I really can't be bothered to.

The fglrx driver can be a pain, but once you get used to installing it, it's not so bad. It does work ok though and is pretty stable once it's up and running. I can understand any newbie facing installing that for the first time giving up pretty quickly though and coming to the conclusion that Linux is overly complex. For me it's a must to get it set up, and get xorg.conf configured to to my liking, quickly as I can't tolerate a 60Hz refresh rate on my CRT monitor for very long.

[_Martyr_]

I use kUbuntu (and severeal other distros in the past...) on and off, and I must say that in the last 18 months things have really come on leaps and bounds! Linux is growing exponentially at this stage, thanks a large part to Ubuntu's popularity. I still use Windows a lot because I develop for the Windows platform in College and because Im not overly zealous or idealistic about which OS I use. I want a good user experience, which arguably both Ubuntu (or any other top Linux distro) and XP or Vista can offer. Where they depart is on the level of configurablility, Linux is clearly miles above MS's offerings in that field, and by definition always will be.

Im no fan boy by any means, but I do think that Vista is getting a little bit of an unfair reaction. Sure, its overpriced, a little bloated and doesnt offer anything hugely new to the average user, but having used it now for nearly 2 months I would argue it is MS's best OS to date. The price issue I cant argue with (I got it free in University through MSDN), it IS arguably too high. As for bloated, I disabled many features within 10 mins of installing, so ive got it a little leaner than default. A thing to note is that MS are now taking a very different approach to memory usage, the OS now trys to intelligently precache all your most used applications in main system memory while the system is idle which means the OS is snappier to start a program and to react to user input, but in uses more RAM. This is effectively the same approach Firefox uses in displaying webpages, using a more memory to enhance speed. This approach works very well in most settings EXCEPT gaming where the precached memory must first be freed for the memory intensive game. This is something MS needs to figure out IMO. But overall, the current Vista kernel seems to be a very good one overall, and Im really not being in any way idealistic about this!

[hoom]

I wish I could convince my PC to not randomly freeze every time I try to use Linux
Its rock solid under XP, but every linux distro I've tried has random freeze.
Ubuntu 6.10 I can't even get to complete install before it freezes.
6.06 is the most stable I've found but I'm lucky if I manage 30mins before a freeze.
I have tried both 32bit & 64bit of the above + a fairly recent Opensuze.

I really want to get to play with the pretty Beryl stuff