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OK, what is this software and where do I get it?
Huh. Compiz is what's used for all the compositing effects, and it's apparently just a mostly-transparent cube, skydome image, and a special fish plugin (didn't even know you could download custom plugins for Compiz, there goes my night's productivity!). Looks gorgeous.
That is soooooo cool! It's been years since I touched Linux, so I don't understand what's going on there. Is it running Linux and then XP side-by-side on separate partitions?
I seldom see my Gnome desktop because I have most of the applications maximized during normal operation. Doesn't everybody?
The idea here is that there are two or three (Compiz being one of them) desktop enhancements with these three-D effects. What is neat about them is that compared to running without them, you are often not using any more resources because they make use of stuff that is on your graphics card that you were not using anyway.
Having said that, you must have the right graphics card and the right setup and so on and so forth, and you might be using more memory than you want to. In other words, this super-charged Linux desktop is not the default and won't work for everyone, depends on your hardware.
I suppose it might be dual-booted, but I doubt it -- there's really no reason to. If someone absolutely had to run some obscene Microsoft-only application, s/he could always do it in a VM session.
I had to fire up an MS VM last month and it was painful, which is why I rarely do it. Maybe once a year or so.
I use VirtualBox (dot org) to run XP for the few Windows apps I need on a once-a-week basis -- it uses virtual disk images much like VMWare, only VirtualBox is open source. There's a commercial version of it as well, if you want a few extra features like 3D support and direct USB peripharal access, but since I don't need them, I get along just fine with the OSS version.
It wasn't quite this cool, but I remember seeing the folks who first developed the BeOS showing a rotating cube (not transparent) with different graphics and files displayed on the sides.
I thought it was neat, as is this.
The WinXP you see running is inside VirtualBox (note the InnoTek splash on startup). VirtualBox is now from Sun Microsystems. You can run a guest operating system in a window, full-screen, or in "seamless" mode (only the task bar and running applications are shown). Extra RAM is a neccessity for virtual machines. I have 8GB on my system, and allocate 1GB or 2GB to each running guest OS.
Compiz isn't as much of a resource hog as it used to be, and will run great on an nVidia graphics card from the last few years. My current setup has nVidia GeForce 7050PV on the motherboard and runs Compiz effects beautifully.
I installed compiz on my laptop with a Nvidia card and I can't seem to get it to do a dfamn thing (except one change I made and I can't remember what it was has now lost me the title bar on each window so I no longer have min/max/close options in the window itself.
Compiz is kind of cool to play with, if you can get it to work (I never could). But I just don't see how it could be particularly useful. Does anyone else just see it as self indulgent geek overload?
I use it to make people go Wow. So, I keep it turned off except for special occasions, such as the first lecture of the semester, etc.
Most of the most useful effects seem to be the least attention-grabbing. Things like being able to preview windows without bringing them to the top (makes searching for the right window easier it they all have the same title), and other small things.
Very cool. What distro are you running?
Sounds like you de-selected "Window Decorations" in the "Effects" section of the CompizConfig settings.
Doug Adler: sounds like you unchecked Window Decorations under the Compiz Settings Manager.
If you're going to play around with Compiz at all, installing the optional Compiz Settings Manager is absolutely essential otherwise you're stuck with the stock Ubuntu effects, which include two desktops, Desktop Wall, and wobbly windows, and not much else. It's in Apt, aptly enough, as "compiz-settings-manager".
The app is called "xfishtank",and its pretty cool.
My mistake,its the atlantis plugin.
Installation instructions here:
http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?p=68054