Gosh, I hate Compiz…

… and I need to find myself another favourite live distro.

Before you read any further, please note that this is just a rant. It’s late, and I’ve had a frustrating evening, and now I’m going to be going into work with sleep deprivation.

Earlier today, I broke my Ubuntu install while re-organising the partitions. Nothing to do with Compiz, but as usual in such circumstances I reached for Knoppix, a DVD copy of 6.1 that came as a magazine cover-disk. The thing is, wobbly windows, like the sexy voice that announces “Initiating startup process”, are impressive the first time, moderately entertaining the next half dozen times, but then become progressively more irritating.

This is exacerbated by trying to deal with something that is quite stressful. I have finally come to the conclusion that I disagree with Mark Shuttleworth – pretty is not a feature. It is at best window-dressing, and at worst a distraction and waste of resources. In fact, Compiz confuses “pretty” with real features. Each time I rebooted into Knoppix, I ended up turning off the effects, and the first time I did this, found myself unable to move any window because the title bar had disappeared. Apparently, this is “window decoration” in Compiz-speak.

Anyway, I got it fixed in the end, thank you Mr. Knopper. Knoppix is still functional, but I would prefer my tools without the gift wrapping. I think I’ll give the STD version a go.

Tags: Linux, User Interface