Compiz is dead

RIP Compiz. I liked it a lot. I wasn't a fan of the desktop cube or wobbly windows, but I liked the subtle effects. But I couldn't use it, because if I did, other things didn't work. Like cut 'n paste, buttons and menus. Things that really shouldn't stop working for mysterious reasons.
Gnome 3 has subtle effects and doesn't seem to have any bugs as calamitous as Compiz. Role on Wheezy!

Firefox 4 borked by Compiz bug in Linux

As mentioned in a previous post, Firefox 4 is suffering badly from a known bug in Compiz on Linux. After coming out of a screen saver, menus will disappear when hovered over.
Minimising and maximising the browser will fix the problem, but for a permanent fix, the only solution seems to be to disable Compix until a newer version of Compiz arrives in your distro. For Ubuntu users, that will be soon- Natty has the fix. For Debian users like me, Compiz will be disabled for quite a while.

Return of the Living Dead Part II

A while ago I wrote about some annoying bugs that had affected me in Ubuntu, but not in Debian Lenny, and how they had "come back from the dead" in Debian Squeeze.
I've just worked out that two of the bugs (failure of copy and paste in Firefox and disappearing controls in Totem in full screen) were actually the same bug- a problem with Compiz described here. Another manifestation of the bug was in the "awesome bar". Typing a letter in Firefox's address bar usually brings up previously visited web sites beginning with or containing that letter- but on occasion this would not happen. All these unexpected behaviours result from the fact that in Compiz "somehow inactivity messes up the order of 'layers' to draw and stuff that is supposed to be on top is drawn below other windows" (Vaphell).
The bug has an even bigger impact on Firefox 4, with right-click menus and even the main menu disappearing when hovered over- a show stopper of a bug.
The head shot required to kill these bugs seems to be to disable Compiz.
The Firefox 4 Compiz bug is discussed on the Debian Forum, the Ubuntu forum, and the Linux Mint forum.

Destop design (1995-2010)

I've mentioned recently how I like to minimise applications like music players to the notification area, and talked about alternative method of minimising to an icon- using a dock.
Now I learn that Ubuntu is set to kill its notification area.
I quite like the old system of minimising documents to the taskbar and putting running applications in the "notification area"- system which apparently originated with Windows 95 (although the "abuse" of the notification area to hold any old application came from third-parties, not MS).
How to avoid running applications in the notification area? I learnt recently that a lot of Ubuntu users have applications like music players running full screen on a different desktop and simply switch desktops. Seems like a good solution, but I've never really got into using more than one desktop.
I recently came across a way to see what's running on different desktops and switch between them, using Compiz and the "Windows" key. The keyboard short-cuts Super (aka the Windows key) + W brings up all desktops and shows what's running. It seems there are a lot of useful Compiz keyboard short-cuts I never knew about.
The way the short-cut worked reminded me of the Gnome 3 shell, which I've been trying out recently- clicking on Activities in the shell opens a window with the desktop or desktops, plus a panel menu.
As a way of organising open applications, I'm going to try having four desktops, and running one application full screen on each desktop. For somebody who has been using the taskbar and notification area for so long, it'll be a case of teaching an old dog new tricks, but with any luck the dog is not yet too old to learn.
The Gnome 3 shell is due for release in September 2010.