I was one who originally left Compiz with the Beryl crowd. It was just more exciting: more plugins, better community support, and eventually it developed into something more polished and easy to use (handy configuration utility, including a tray icon for easy starting and stopping).

Compiz-Fusion is intended to eventually blend the best of both worlds, and there have been many people on the web already singing its praises. So, I decided to give it a try on my Kubuntu Feisty box.

Needless to say, I was very disappointed. Many of the problems that plagued compiz when I used it over a year ago are still present. It’s still much slower than Beryl, and, worst of all, there is still no fool-proof system tray icon. To top it all off, it’s still largely Gnome-centered.

So, I’ve decided to stay with Beryl until at least October. Why October you ask? By then, we might have a seriously working beta or release candidate of KDE4, which will hopefully ship with a new native KWIN composite system. At that time, I will kiss Beryl and Compiz goodbye, God willing.

After waiting for many months for high definition support, geexbox has made an unofficial release, which I have tried and am very pleased. It’s like coming home after a long journey.

If you haven’t tried Geexbox (a LiveCD and installable home media center operating system), give a whirl. You can burn their preconfigured ISO to CD or use their simple ISO generator to add features and customize your version. You won’t be disappointed.

But, before you get out your flag-burning material, you should know that it was in the script. The show is being canceled to “make room for new programmes.”

The craziest part of all: the above was not satire.