About Compiz-Crap, pointless pulseaudio and decent font

[BelkinCrap]

Hi there,

First, good job for this distribution I'm very impressed about its user-friendliness, it feels clean and light and it pretty-much work out of the box, just had to install my fglrx driver (wich is a piece of crap by the way) after friendly being notified to do so. So very good impression so far for the few I have tryed.

Now comes the bad :

First, it comes with compiz-Crap enabled by default. Compiz is just an eye-candy thing wich bring well-know problems.
I didn't find a way to disable it in the compiz setting manager so I just removed it since I could barly watch a video , and I didnt even try to play a game.
I don't know if there's a way to disable it, but if so, do it by default, cause having this enabled by default would just bring trouble for new/unexperienced users for the sake of some eye-candy effects.

Second, PULSEAUDIO !! omfg guys, pulseaudio is a totaly pointless (and useless for 99% of users) piece of hell, the only thing it bring for average user is sound delay, thats all. Don't tell me about software mixxing since alsa do it by default since 1.0.9rc2 for chipsets which don't support harware mixing.
Its maybe not so annoying for listening music but when I play a game I dont really like hearing my gun fire one sec after I fired.
And talk about people doing sound/video recording/editing and stuff like this etc.

Of course I totaly removed this and everything works the same without stupid sound delay, however it seem some gnome player depend on pulseaudio (is that a joke...) wich is totaly stupid btw, but well there plenty of decent players around.
I don't remember all that have been removed cause of dependency but it wasn't worth the sound delay.

PulseAduio only bring troubles for users.

and last, fonts.
System fonts is pretty decent so far, however firefox and thunderbird default font are pieces of crap, for god know reason they are not implemented to use system fonts so you mosly get this horrible Serif font wich is totaly ugly and destroy eyes.

Thats pretty much all wich got my attention right know, I'll try Mint deeper and hope to see even more great thing for this great distro coming

Again, good job for this very nice distribution.

[beli0135]

I agree with you abouyt pulse... it is total crap and should be banned (at least until fixed and properly working).
Compiz... well compiz-crap is good, but I agree that shouldn't be enabled by default, but some visible button or question.
For fonts firefox and tb... I never seen any problem.

[igorzwx]

QOUTE: "I agree with you abouyt pulse... it is total crap and should be banned (at least until fixed and properly working)."

PulseAudio seems to be fundamentally wrong by design, it may never work properly
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... sorry.html

What is more, it might be impossible to remove PulseAudio from Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Mint in the near future
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1229804&page=3

[DrHu]

If you have a modern computer with a reasonable graphics card (prefer nvidia for Linux support); don't use an integrated graphic card, reasonable sized RAM (1-2GB) and reasonable hard drives 300GB or so
--nothing out of the ordinary for many modern computer packages, even if it comes with windows OS (XP or Vista)

Then you will have little problem using Compiz effects
--only find out how to disable the parts you don't like, not because it is slow, but because it annoys you. That is exactly the same procedure you would use with either windows or Apple's OS-X

Disable the graphic/animation effects you don't want to use in those OS distributions

Pulseaudio is more difficult
It is part of the parent distribution or Gnome desktop's preferred or default installation, so disabling it is now or later will likely become more problematic
--despite that, it will no doubt continue to be improved due to its preferential positioning with those releases, and alternatives, like Alsa or OSS may or may not become desirable. They won't be if you do not have a problem with pulseaudio sound controls

Fonts ugly or not?..
I don't have problems with fonts on either Gnome or Kde

[igorzwx]

I have already installed antiX on the ancient box (of 2001)
http://antix.mepis.com/index.php/Main_Page

Fantastic performance! It might be an ideal solution for netbooks.

[BelkinCrap]

I personaly don't have trouble running compiz, only when watching video but I bet this have to do with the crappy fglx driver, however this could be a problem for people like you said with powerless hardware, wich would cause them trouble at the very start, that's why since compiz is just about some looking effects, it should not be enabled by defaults.

About PulseAudio I still don't get the point of having it put aside the fact that some apps requier it which I found totaly stupid at the start, what the very benefit of pa in the end? The only thing I saw is sound delay. Making applications depend on such higher layer was totaly stupid in the start but maybe I'm the one who's stupid.

For font I only talk about firefox and thunderbird, I found crappy comparing to system font, but that's matter of preference, though I often see people complaining about it too.

[igorzwx]

QUOTE: "Making applications depend on such higher layer was totaly stupid in the start"

Somebody told on Ubuntu forum that it was "beyond the stupid", although, it was a subjective opinion, of course.
For me, PulseAudio is a security risk, first of all.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/17 ... l_exploit/
QUOTE: "The exploit works only when a security extension knows as SELinux, or Security-Enhanced Linux, is enabled. Conversely, it also works when audio software known as PulseAudio is installed."

see also:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/24 ... economics/
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20 ... 8&oe=UTF-8

The problem is that it might be impossible to remove PulseAudio from any sort of Linux in the near future.
They are building a kind of Berlin Wall, in fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

[Technomancer]

I rather enjoy Compiz on ym system, what are these Compiz related complications that people are speaking of? I haven't really been able to make any direct connection between issues I've been having and Compiz but I am fairly new to Linux and could easily miss the connection. Could someone be so kind as to enlighten me as to the sorts of issues one might encounter while running Compiz?

Also, I agree that PulseAudio is horrible, I've had a far better experience since installing ALSA. PulseAudio is easy enough to use but the latency it provides is absolutely horrendous, especially for latency sensitive applications like rythym games or audio/video editing. Why would Ubuntu keep such a crippled system in it's distro?

[DrHu]

Could someone be so kind as to enlighten me as to the sorts of issues one might encounter while running Compiz

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&keywords=compiz
Flicking screens or stuttering video

[Aging Technogeek]

To disable Compiz in Mint 7 Main Edition, simply go to Preferences=>Appearance=>Visual Effects and select None.

[dequire]

To be fair (or at least bring a different angle to the discussion), my understanding is that PA has been a major issue in Ubuntu's implementation of it. Not necessarily PA's existence in general. We'll just haver to see if the latency issues go away with Ubuntu 9.10 (And Mint .

[Blacsdad]

I didn't find a way to disable it in the compiz setting manager so I just removed it since I could barly watch a video , and I didnt even try to play a game.

The following command should turn compiz off (and enable metacity in its place).

Code: Select all

compiz --replace

[fuzzyghost]

I agree 100% about PulseAudio being a horrific experience. It works fine, for a while; then it breaks, you have to purge and then reinstall, and hope it works for a while longer. It once broke on me mid-session. I have no idea what the hell was going on in the mind of the Gnome devs, but they need to ditch Pulse.

[JonM33]

To disable Compiz in Mint 7 Main Edition, simply go to Preferences=>Appearance=>Visual Effects and select None.

I agree. Not that hard if someone doesn't want it. I find the Compiz effects to be a nice change and give Linux some flavor beyond the basics.

[Midnighter]

Pulse Audio? Mm, seems to cause troubles for quite a few. Will reserve my judgement yet.

Compiz? What's the problem? Disable it if you don't want it. 30 seconds of looking thru the menus will show the Compiz Settings feature, where you can just diable it. I dio this if I go to play games, but otherwise leave it for most part, and I don't have hugely powerful graphics. Hell, even my netbook and shiity Acer laptop (1.5Ghz cpu with intel graphics) handles it fine.