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Compiz () is a compositing window manager for the
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting ...
, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as loadable plugins. Because it conforms to the ICCCM conventions, Compiz can be used as a substitute for the default Mutter or Metacity, when using GNOME Panel, or KWin in
KDE Plasma Workspaces KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014. It includes a new defaul ...
. Internally Compiz uses the
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...
library as the interface to the graphics hardware.


Hardware requirements

Initially, Compiz only worked with 3D hardware supported by
Xgl Xgl is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X Window System protocol designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL an ...
. Most
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and ATI graphics cards are known to work with Compiz on Xgl. Since May 22, 2006 Compiz works on the standard X.Org Server, by using
AIGLX Accelerated Indirect GLX ("AIGLX") is an Open-source software, open source project founded by Red Hat and the Fedora (operating system), Fedora community, led by Kristian Høgsberg, to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to t ...
. Besides Intel GMA graphics cards, AIGLX also supports using AMD graphics cards (including
R300 The R300 GPU, introduced in August 2002 and developed by ATI Technologies, is its third generation of GPU used in ''Radeon'' graphics cards. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in feature ...
and newer cards) using the open-source driver which supports since fall 2006. NVIDIA's binary drivers (since Version 1.0-9629) support on standard X.Org server; ATI/AMD's binary drivers do since version 8.42.


History

By the early 2000's, both ATI and
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
drivers became increasingly common on
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
. Advanced
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...
development was no longer restricted to expensive
UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
workstations. Around the same time,
Xgl Xgl is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X Window System protocol designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL an ...
, Xegl and
AIGLX Accelerated Indirect GLX ("AIGLX") is an Open-source software, open source project founded by Red Hat and the Fedora (operating system), Fedora community, led by Kristian Høgsberg, to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to t ...
gave Xorg the possibility of using OpenGL for transformation and effects on windows surfaces. With foundations finally available, xcompmgr pioneered the features of a compositing window manager.


Luminocity

An effort called Luminocity began with some GNOME developers to make use of recent developments. In March 2005, the Luminocity project already featured effects like "wobbly windows", "physics models for window moving", "live updating workspace switcher" and "alpha compositing". Given Luminocity was mostly a prototype, its development soon was abandoned, but some of its effects and behaviors were later implemented by Compiz.


Compiz

The first version of Compiz was released as
free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...
by
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(
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) no later than February 2006 in the wake of the (also new)
Xgl Xgl is an obsolete display server implementation supporting the X Window System protocol designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL an ...
. It was one of the earliest compositing window managers for X. In March 2006 Compiz was ported to
AIGLX Accelerated Indirect GLX ("AIGLX") is an Open-source software, open source project founded by Red Hat and the Fedora (operating system), Fedora community, led by Kristian Høgsberg, to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to t ...
by Red Hat.


Beryl

Beryl was the project name for the ''quinnstorm'' branch of Compiz, announced on September 19, 2006 after Compiz developer Quinn Storm and the development team decided that the fork had come too far from the original Compiz started by
Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the l ...
(). After the Novell XGL/Compiz team (mostly David Reveman) refused the proposition to merge the Quinnstorm changes with compiz-vanilla, the decision was made to make a real differentiation. Among the differences to Compiz, Beryl had a new window decorator named Emerald based on cgwd along with a theme manager called , used a flat file backend instead of gconf, and had no GNOME dependencies.


Merger of the Compiz and Beryl communities

On March 30, 2007, discussions between the Beryl and Compiz communities led to a merger of the two communities which results in two new software packages: * Compiz, (also Compiz-core) which contains only the core functionality of Compiz and base plugins * Compiz Fusion, consisting of the plugins, decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz communities. Compiz Fusion concentrates on installation, configuration and additional plugins to add to the core functionalities of Compiz. Outcomes include plans to fund a code review panel consisting of the best developers from each community who will see that any code included in a release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution in an officially supported package.


Further branches

In the fourth quarter of 2008, two separate branches of Compiz were created: ''compiz++'' and ''NOMAD''; compiz++ was geared toward the separation of compositing and
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...
layers for the rendering of the window manager without compositing effects, and the port from C to C++ programming language. NOMAD was geared towards the improvement of remote desktop performance for Compiz installations.


Merger of the Compiz branches

On February 2, 2009 a conference call was held between developers of Compiz, Compiz++, NOMAD and Compiz Fusion where it was decided to merge the projects into a unified project, simply named Compiz, with a unified roadmap.


Compiz 0.9 series

On July 4, 2010, Sam Spilsbury, lead Compiz developer, announced the release of Compiz 0.9.0 with a new API, rewritten in C++. Canonical Ltd. hired Spilsbury to further develop Compiz for Ubuntu in October 2010. Since then Compiz development mostly coincides with Ubuntu development. Main development moved to Canonical's Launchpad service. The 0.9.x versions up to 0.9.5 were seen as unstable/ beta software. With version 0.9.6 in progress, Canonical hired developer Daniel van Vugt to work on Compiz full-time. While 0.9.6 never officially released, Compiz 0.9.7.0 was released a month ahead of enterprise-targeted Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (''Long Term Support'') and declared stable. A few days before the official release of Ubuntu 12.04 a new development branch, 0.9.8, was created in preparation for Ubuntu 12.10. For Compiz version 0.9.8 development has moved to a new Launchpad page. In November 2012, Spilsbury announced that he had left Canonical and stated he had no plans to port Compiz to Wayland. A small team continues to work on Compiz with version 0.9.13 being the focus of development as of July 2016.


Compiz Reloaded

A group forked the Compiz 0.8 series code base and modernized it and maintains it as of 2019.


Features

Almost all available Compiz features – except translucency, dimming, and desaturation – are delivered using plugins. Compiz plugins include the cube effect, Alt-Tab application-switching with live previews or icons, and a feature similar to
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
's Mission Control. The Composite extension to X is used, as is the
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...
extension . The Compiz project categorizes the plugins into four main groups: Main, Extra, Unsupported, and Experimental. Window managers use a program called a window decorator to provide the window borders with the usual minimize, maximize and close buttons. Unlike many window managers which have only one window decorator, Compiz users have a choice of three: * ''gtk-window-decorator'' uses either a basic
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-based rendering engine or can use Metacity themes. * ''kde-window-decorator'' uses native KWin themes. * ''Emerald'', a custom decorator with its own theme format that has been ported to Compiz. It used to be Beryl's default decorator.


Deployments

Compiz or Beryl have usually been deployed on Linux and other X11-based
Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
platforms together with GNOME 2 and KDE 3. Since version 4.2, however, KDE's own KWin ships with capabilities similar to Compiz. As such, Compiz is not usually deployed with recent
Plasma Workspaces KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014. It includes a new default ...
versions. GNOME version 3.0 uses
GNOME Shell GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3, which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications, switching between windows and is also a widget engine. ...
which is built as a plugin to the Mutter compositing window manager. This means Compiz cannot be used in conjunction with GNOME Shell. Citing a lack of maintenance on the part of the Compiz developers, Fedora removed Compiz from the Fedora repositories from Fedora 17 however Compiz has been reinstated in the Fedora repositories since Fedora 18. An official MATE spin which includes Compiz has been available since Fedora 19. Compiz was dropped from the
Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
repositories from Debian 7 (Wheezy) onwards in August 2013 due to broken packages and a lack of upstream development on the part of the Compiz developers. Compiz was reintroduced into Debian in December 2016 by the Hypra.fr Team. Compiz was dropped from the
Arch Linux Arch Linux () is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. The default installation is a minimal base system, ...
repositories in May 2013. Compiz can still be installed from packages available in the Arch User Repository. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and later included Compiz in the ''universe'' repository. A limited version was included by default as "Desktop Effects" in Ubuntu 7.04. From Ubuntu 7.10 onwards, Compiz was enabled by default. In 2010 Canonical released their Unity interface which is written as a plugin for Compiz.


Reception and impact

Early compiz reviews were mostly favorable praising its performance, beauty and novelty value. It was included in
Ubuntu 6.06 Ubuntu releases are made semiannually by Canonical Ltd, the developers of the Ubuntu operating system, using the year and month of the release as a version number. The first Ubuntu release, for example, was Ubuntu 4.10 and was released on 20 Oct ...
repositories to allow easy installation and was, as of 2021, the only time an Ubuntu release was postponed. Other projects like Metisse and Project Looking Glass were developed around the same time, but none became as known or widely deployed as Compiz. Other window managers like
GNOME Shell GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3, which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications, switching between windows and is also a widget engine. ...
and KWin would later also implement compositing effects. The development of Wayland around 2010 merged the functions of compositor and graphics server on the same program, a move that would eventually obsolete separate window managers and compositors. Distributions which still included it by default usually enabled just a few useful plugins and disabled the more "blingy" ones. Also, distributions increasingly began including KDE and GNOME with their default window managers. The last Ubuntu version to include Compiz to implement its Unity desktop manager was
Ubuntu 16.04 Ubuntu releases are made semiannually by Canonical Ltd, the developers of the Ubuntu operating system, using the year and month of the release as a version number. The first Ubuntu release, for example, was Ubuntu 4.10 and was released on 20 Oct ...
. After that, its development became mostly stagnant.


Some Compiz effects (0.8.5)

Burn effect.png, Burn effect Dream effect.png, Dream effect Explode effect.png, Explode effect Magic Lamp effect.png, Magic Lamp effect Maximized window deformation.png, Deformation of maximized window


See also

* Comparison of X window managers * VirtualGL *
DeskSpace DeskSpace, formerly known as Yod'm 3D (short for ''Yet anOther Desktop Manager 3D'') is a virtual desktop manager available for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. Features DeskSpace maps six virtual desktops to a cube and allows the user to swi ...
* Project Looking Glass * Metisse


References


External links


Compiz
on Launchpad * (unmaintained) * {{freedesktop.org 2006 software 3D GUIs Compositing window managers Free software programmed in C Free X window managers Freedesktop.org Linux windowing system-related software Software using the MIT license