3D desktop is one of the weakest Ubuntu’s spot, besides of course power management and multiple screen support. And having two independent group of developers (Compiz and Beryl) who used to be a single group before, but now working separately, does not really help. But the good news are they decided to reunite!
After several weeks of discussion the leaders of Compiz and Beryl have agreed that the two communities shall reunite. This decision is supported by both David and Quinn and represents the majority decision of the administrators and developers in each community. At this early stage not a lot has been decided, but these are the main points of the agreement gathered by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
- Compiz will effectively split in to two divisions: Compiz-core and Compiz-extra.
- The Compiz-Core division will focus on core functionality. The name of the core package will remain compiz.
- The Compiz-Extra division, which includes plugins, decorators, settings tools and related applications and their developers, will merge with the Beryl project’s programmers and offerings in these areas to form a new community with the temporary name of "Composite Community".
- The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins, decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz communities. We will create a code review panel consisting of the best developers from each community who will see that any code included in a release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution in an officially supported package. Support for existing packages will be continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.
- The websites of each community will remain up and running until a new, user oriented site is completed. Since the forums are the heart of each community, they will be merged first. Once we have a single community forum we can use it to discuss the additional details, including the name of the new project, as well as setting the goals for the first release.
The end result of this for Linux desktop users should be a single, united and improved 3D desktop option.