[vox] Finally tried Xgl &cetera

[Bill Kendrick]

So I tried Xgl, compiz, beryl and emerald for the first time last night.
(I'm running the latest Kubuntu on a 32-bit Athlon w/ an Nvidia card.)

I must say... it's quite fun.  A little slow, for some reason -- there may
be some Xgl settings or xorg.conf settings I need to tweak -- but I'm an
eyecandy kind of guy, so I think it's great.  (Remember, I'm an Atari 8-bit
afficionado who would've rather had an Amiga than anything else back in the
16-bit computing days of the late-80s/early-90s.)

The beryl window manager and emerald themes are, however, missing a few
useful things I've enjoyed in KDE in the past, thanks to KWin window manager:

* ACTUAL multiple desktops --
  + right now, my SuperKaramba's are only visible on one desktop, rather than
    all four
  + all windows, across all desktops, are shown in the taskbar

* Advanced window behavior --
  + no titlebar/border (I do this with my Konversation IRC client, which
    lives at the bottom of my screen, in a Quake-console kind of way,
    displayed and hidden with the press of a key)
  + automagic "on all desktops" when certain apps/windows appear
    (again, I do this with Konversation)
  + window immobility (force-full-screen-width, disallow moving/resizing)
    (again... done to Konversation)


One thing I find quite cool is an accessibility feature that lets me
zoom into the screen by holding some mod keys and rolling my mouse
scrollwheel.


Gotta run,

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/