[OT] Good to be back: An experiment with Compiz

[Robin Haswell]

Well after finally trashing my XGL install after a 3 days of usage, I can say it's good to be back 
to good old XFWM.

For those XFCE users who like the look of Compiz, let me tell you this: It's stable, it's fast(er 
than XFCE), and it looks goddamn cool. But I can honestly say, nothing beats XFCE on functionality. 
Compiz is a hell of a lot better than the last Metacity I tried, but XFWM just kicks butt. 
Edge-flipping, scroll on xfdesktop, window-shading, and (thank god) configurable keyboard shortcuts 
so I can make desktops act like VTs. It's the little things that you miss the most. And the number 
of help windows I opened by hitting alt+F1...

I do miss a couple of things though. The "expose" feature (the one that scales all your windows and 
makes them all visible) was really, really useful, especially on a busy desktop. I'd say Compiz was 
worth it for that alone. The other thing was a useful alt+tab. It fades in/out the windows as you 
cycle through, making it much easier to see what's going on. If I ever get any C skillz I'll 
consider writing that for xfwm with composite support.

So if there are any XFCE'ers out there looking to experiment with Compiz, I would say this: By all 
means try it out, you might like it. But compared to XFWM, nothing beats usability. XFWM blows me 
away every time I use it. After flicking between metacity (rubbish), e16 (old) and e17 (unstable) 
for so long in search of a usable window manager, I was shocked to find one in a stable state 
sitting right in my sources.list.

Keep up the good work guys.

-Rob