compiz/beryl and fast user switching

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 12:45 -0700, Matt Graham wrote:
> After a long battle with technology, Josh Coffman wrote:
> > On 8/31/07, Craig White <craig at tobyhouse.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 11:00 -0700, Josh Coffman wrote:

> >> I always thought that the impressive thing to demonstrate was stability
> 
> You can't show someone "stability" in 30 seconds.  (Well, unless you do 
> something like randomly delete a bunch of important stuff in /etc and show 
> how the system keeps limping along.)  Most people's attention spans are too 
> short to ... oh, look, a puppy!
----
if these are the decision makers (short attention spans), then you have
much more serious issues to deal with.

people understand things like stability when they have a program that
isn't working right and then they have to uninstall and reinstall
because that is the only option left to them. Dig out the original CD's,
etc.

I guess the point is that if you want to hang your hat on eye candy as a
means to make a OS choice, I would bury you with a tablet demonstration.
Windows Vista desktop has 3d effects, next month so will Mac's...there's
no exclusivity there.

I mean there has to be some essential honesty and if you can honestly
say that the reason you use Linux is compiz/beryl, then by all means,
use it as a selling feature.
----
> 
> >> text based configuration files, automated installations/updates and of
> 
> Text config files, while extremely useful, aren't impressive or even 
> comprehensible to Joe User.  "apt-get dist-upgrade" or its synaptic 
> equivalent, OTOH, is easy to explain and demonstrate.  I think *that* is a 
> better selling point.
----
yeah but people don't want to use CLI - fedora is starting to get the
packaging together to do additional software installation via GUI. I
suspect that other distro's do and I know that Linspire *cough* has been
doing this for a while now.
----
> 
> >> Eye candy things like compiz/beryl are hardly stable and are impressive
> >> only for people that know little about computers.
> 
> "People who know little about computers" are roughly 90% of people.  I suppose 
> you can ignore them if you want, but it's a losing long-term strategy IMO.
----
I tell people the real details and provide background when necessary. I
think the assumption is whether they are utterly incapable of
understanding the real reasons or not.
----
> 
> > 3d desktop is impressive to the casual over-the-shoulder peek at a coffee
> > shop, or showing someone something on your machine like a youtube video
> > briefly.
> >
> > Craig, you're right, but unfortunately my opportunities to introduce linux
> > are limited to first impressions. For first impressions, style is usually
> > more impressive than substance.
> 
> *ding* we have a winner.  FWIW, compiz-fusion has been pretty stable for me on 
> 2 machines once I got it set up properly.  It's just ... slower on this 
> bloody FireGL2 card than it should be, and sometimes shows tearing.  Ah well, 
> onward and upward!
----
I would feel stupid pumping Linux based upon compiz/beryl because it has
nothing whatsoever to do with productivity...in fact, I find it to be a
barrier to productivity. Impress people with real benefits instead of
baffling them with bs.

-- 
Craig White <craig at tobyhouse.com>