Even before the device has been announced, been looking at it's initial video's I could very well imagine someone porting the Compiz Fusion app for N900. Sure it's got the hardware powerful enough to support it.

Say 'Bye Bye' to the standard themes and Active Desktops... here's a complete new threshold of the way this device would operate.

Here's a quick demo video that gives you an idea: (p.s. all the multi-tasking shown in the video is even possible on the N900) plus Maemo is based on Debian and so is Ubuntu. In short if it can work there.... then why not here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ

Looking forward to hear your comments and votes.

ehm, what would it be good for on such tiny display?

I am pretty sure the reason transitions are kept to a minimum is to save battery power and memory. Something like Compiz would likely hammer the battery as if you were running a game, not something you want happening when simply switching between running applications.

Plus it all looks well and good, but I have had nothing but problems with Desktop Linux when using compositing (though granted, I haven't used it a great deal on Ubuntu but Mandriva). I have always ended up with it turned off to avoid video tearing, complete lack of video acceleration, instability, you name it. It may be nVidia at fault but that does not alter the fact it was not usable. That is something which does not happen on Windows btw.

So even on an environment where it SHOULD work (minimal difference in battery life on a laptop) it causes problems. I'm not sure I would want a dirty hack to get it on N900, it has perfectly reasonable transitions as it stands without wasting RAM and battery power.

This would be amazing.

However, Compiz Fusion is a "compositing" Window Manager not an "app". Thus it would need to replace the Hildon+Matchbox Window Manager. Furthermore while older versions were using XGL based off of OpenGL now it used AIGLX of which I have not heard of support with PowerVR. What PowerVR means to this is 1.) Need open sourced drivers (or very very clever hacking which would be very inefficient) 2.) Modification of Compiz's AIGLX support to utilize Open GL ES 2.0

I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention something. But the point is this wouldn't be a simple port to ARM thing. This would likely require an over-haul to get working. Of course it would be worth it.

If someone gets this usable, they deserve a free N900 for the effort.

Yea, I would look cool. We dont need to port every heavy effect just the nitty gritty UI transitions etc would look cool.

I am pretty sure the reason transitions are kept to a minimum is to save battery power and memory. Something like Compiz would likely hammer the battery as if you were running a game, not something you want happening when simply switching between running applications.

Never used a Linux desktop before so you may be on the dot... but just like Winterboard for the iPhone does make the phone unstable and slow, people still wanna use it for the fancy UI.
Same for the N900, it may slow the phone down and surely will be a battery drain (I know mine last for 12hrs only with GPRS running actively at the background)

Having considered all the down sides, I feel we can always develop a Lite version tweaked for the device, enabling those wobbly transition effects along with the 3D cube.

just my 2cents here..

If all you want is the effects like the cube rotation, it shouldn't be too hard to add them to hildon-desktop. The reason the transitions are kept fairly simple is mainly because it's nicer, not because of limitations.

Porting compiz doesn't really make sense to me, unless you want to have multiple windows on the screen. But I can't possibly see that being useful on the small display, even with a stylus.

no item no proposal no solution no compiz!

Please consider to read this

How to use Brainstorm - http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33189

Gentlemen, please follow the Brainstorm rules: http://wiki.maemo.org/Brainstorm

should we create a std. post to not double post and have all links in it for future cases?

personally i think the effects the n900 currently uses are just fine... any more and i think you'd start to have a very "busy" looking gui