Use Mutter instead Compiz in elementary OS

[Jose Luis Navarro]

The last news ( state of Compiz http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1Mjc and desktop performance
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1204_desktops&num=1) has put Compiz in the wrong place. I think that would be good begin to make a transition to Mutter. Not for Luna because is late for it but consider to next release.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

We're going to use Compiz 0.8.x for Luna, it has better performance and stability than 0.9.x series. We'll consider Mutter for Luna+1, here's the blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/mutter

[quequotion (quequotion)]

I'm not against switching to Mutter, specially for Elementary with it's focus on simplicity of design and comprehensibility of function.

I would like to point out that this "last news" is a hideous and vile rumour.

Compiz is still in active development.

The 0.9.x series is a bit of a mess, since the hiring of Sam Spilsbury by Canonical and the summary execution of Compiz Web, but development continues in bzr.

The last few weeks have seen some serious progress in bringing patches together and fixing some bugs.

Compiz is absolutely not dead, although it may never be what the 0.8.x branch dreamed of being.

Canonical seems to be interested in a stripped-down 2.5D version of Compiz.

It may be a good time to fork 0.8.x, fix it's bugs, and make somthing that could integrate well with Elementary and other desktops.

[Sean Davis (bluesabre)]

If you consider using the 0.8 branch, I might recommend to just avoid using compiz altogether. The best feature of 0.9 was window snapping, and if we're going to give that up, I would recommend just using the metacity compositor. You get the nice shadows and gradients, plus it runs on non-3d-capable hardware.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

WIndow snapping is available for ages, it was there in Compiz 0.8 for sure. If by "window snapping" you mean Grid plugin, it's available in 0.8 too in some form; however, we won't implement something that's not consistent between window managers. So we will either use a WM-independent solution (e.g. http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/set-up-hot-corners-edge-flipping-in.html), or not use it at all.
Metacity does not give nice window shadows because it draws them for composited windows, so e.g. Slingshot looks horrible.

[Cassidy James Blaede (cassidyjames)]

Hey, this is actually being worked on via Gala now. ;)

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

Gala (libmutter based) is present in the latest daily. Marking fix committed.