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Burn My Windows

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Re: Burn My Windows

#221
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol was thinking this yesterday when I was explain school years to my grade schoolers. You know, 2nd grade was from 2020-2021 and third is 2021-2022. Half way through I was thinking, we could probably go back to 2 digit years now. . ..

We're just starting the 20s. I don't think I ever heard of the decade from 1910 to 1919 being referred to as the 10s, but I definitely heard of the 20s. Maybe the first 20 years of a century are kind of hard to name, so, yeah it's about time.

I'm pretty certain "teens" was commonly used to refer to the years 1910--1919.

Re: Burn My Windows

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mid '00s if you prefer. Referencing decades in two-digit form fell out of favour with the Y2K issue. Perhaps it should be resurrected. At the turn of the 20th century, fashion was to refer to "oh-eight" and such, IIRC. I don't know that the decade had a common nomenclature. I suspect there's a Wikipedia article on that somewhere.... Hrm ... not really, or at least not readily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade

I've heard it referred to as the aughts. (or in the UK the naughties) Useful way of distinguishing it from the other decades of the 2000's

Also noughts or "noughties".

Re: Burn My Windows

#223
post #152

VR desktops apps nowadays let you place windows around your head in VR, so that you feel fully immersed in whatever you're doing. Back in the Compiz days, my virtual desktop switcher was a 3D cylinder. Holding the middle mouse button would zoom out my current desktop, placing me in the center of a giant 3D cylinder which I could rotate by moving the mouse to switch to a different desktop. And it worked with my dual m…

How bad is the "screendoor" effect with top-of-the-line VR headsets nowadays?

Re: Burn My Windows

#224
post #113

Compiz was probably the single most impactful event for desktop linux of the mid 2000's. Not that it itself made much of a difference, but the ripples affect many areas we take for granted today. A few reasons: - it put linux ahead of windows and mac in terms of appearance; - it brought many new users and most were a good mix technical and enthusiasts; - it showed the advantages of modular software; - many plugins we…

It was just plain fun! Nowadays, the only thing to look forward to is what functionality the Gnome devs ripped out this time...

But they did that back then as well. Quartz compositor and quartz extreme are older.

It has always been like this.

Re: Burn My Windows

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I instinctively expected to hear the notes of "Here Comes the Hotstepper" when I clicked on that video. I was expecting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ ; which was somewhat popular to send around to show comparisons of how Compiz was so far ahead it could not just replicate Vista's interface, but could also better it in some aspects like the famous 3D cube. Thanks to you and others for working on it! Look…

Shocking to see what passed as acceptable video quality back in 2007.

Without checking, I would guess it was more related to limited upload speeds: video was probably recorded at a much higher bitrate, but then uploading that...

Re: Burn My Windows

#226

Compiz was probably the single most impactful event for desktop linux of the mid 2000's. Not that it itself made much of a difference, but the ripples affect many areas we take for granted today. A few reasons: - it put linux ahead of windows and mac in terms of appearance; - it brought many new users and most were a good mix technical and enthusiasts; - it showed the advantages of modular software; - many plugins we…

I thought compiz was interesting and it did have an impact. That said, In the mid 2000s, Linux was better but still had issues getting video/etc configured properly (depending on what you wanted to do/your hardware). I specifically moved to OS X because video just worked.

Playing videos with Xv worked well for me on Linux in early 2000s. I can't never get proper hw-accelerated video to play without bogging CPU down on my Linux laptops anymore (Thinkpads with Intel low-voltage CPUs).

Re: Burn My Windows

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say the same. It makes the computer "feel" better. It reminds me of discussions around Mac vs PC in the early days. The experience of using a Mac was more "fluid" than Windows. The Mac would draw windows faster, move the mouse faster (as in more refreshes of the cursor position per second) and that made it more comfortable to use. At the same time I also used Sun and SGI boxes regularly and the stark differ…

Your comparison of Mac vs PC user experience reminds me of a criticism I read of Java's cross-platform GUI implementation. The critic compared Java GUIs to an episode of Star Trek where aliens had created a facsimile of a room and table of food, but when the Enterprise crew tried to eat the food they gagged on it. It turned out the aliens, working off of visual TV broadcasts, hadn't realized the food was supposed to…

Are you sure you're not talking about the feast scene from Galaxy Quest?

Re: Burn My Windows

#229
post #94
post #86

I wonder if it's possible to do things like this with Windows or MacOS. I love the idea of cool effects like this (even if the first thing I did after OSX introduced the genie effect was to turn it off—nowadays the hardware is fast enough for it to not be annoying and the split second of the window shrinking away is a nice visual cue as to what's happened especially if one accidentally hides the window via cmd-H).

macOS has gotten a lot less fun, starting with X. I remember no end of UI-customization utilities for pre-X Macs, some of which were really powerful, like Kaleidoscope. I loved being able to make the system look like an NeXT box (there was even an Irix theme) or design my own UI entirely. Even Apple briefly considered the idea of building theme support right into the OS. But they didn’t, and the few quirky things tha…

On the flip side, I remember in the late 80s that pretty much every Mac disk had a virus on it thanks to fairly loose OS security in those days. I'm guessing that no more talking moose is the price we pay for not having to worry about getting a virus anytime something is put in the computer.

Re: Burn My Windows

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Compiz was released. It was mind-blowing, its sheer awesomeness was something out of this world. "ok, Windows is done" me and my friends thought, "prepare for linux dominating the desktops". Yet ~15 years later here we are.

I remember Compiz being cool looking, but resulting in mostly crashing my computer or freezing the GPU driver.

I never had any issues at all with it. I believe it was all tied in with how stable your graphics card driver was. I grew tired of it after a few months and went back to boring old xfce flat, square windows, but it was fun while it lasted and peopel were always impressed by it.
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