Compiz is no doubt the best compositing manager for Linux. It has been a part of Ubuntu for a long time and is actively maintained as well. Since the addition of the contentious Unity plugin, Compiz has become the most popular and reliable compositing manager easily surpassing GNOME 3's Mutter.
Being a part of a big project like Ubuntu, developers are coming up with amazing new plugins like Modal dialogs. This, of course, doesn't mean that there aren't any useless plugins for Compiz. Here are 5 such plugins that find no practical applications whatsoever:
1. Desktop Cube
The desktop cube was and is one of the most enviable features of Linux. Managing multiple desktops in a visually intuitive way has made the cube quite popular amongst Linux enthusiasts. Having said that, switching desktops using the cube plugin is, if not clumsy, distracting for many. Imagine you have a browser window in one desktop and LibreOffice Spreadsheet in the other. Now say, you have to quickly switch between the two, would you want a huge cube to take you from window to another? The cube, as fancy as it may look, is bereft of any practical application. Of course, many won't agree with me on that one, but some of the extra plugins that come with the Cube plugin are so ridiculous that you might eventually acquiesce.
Here are two other useless Compiz plugins related to Desktop Cube:
* Cube Gears
The Cube Gears plugin that is an extra plugin that places the gears from glxgears – which is basically a standard animation showing just rotating gears – inside the cube. Now why would anybody want to do that, I don't know, but all I know is that whenever you make the cube transparent, u can see some gears in action. I seriously would love to understand the motive behind making this plugin, is it some sort of mechanical voyeurism or just a joke?
* Cube Atlantis
Cube Atlantis is a similar extra plugin, which shows the fishes from the Atlantis screensaver on the Cube's walls. Having a fish tank while switching from one Window to another might be a great way to distract you a little, but on a practical level, it doesn't make sense.
2. Negative plugin
A negative image is what you see on a camera film, which is then developed in low-lit labs to give you the nice family photos that adorn your walls. Nobody in his or her right mind hangs, prints or even likes to look at negatives of a real image. So tell me folks, why would you want a plugin that turns your desktop into its negative image?
3. Water Effect
Another one of those eye candy plugins for the Linux desktop. It looks fancy but has no practical use. The plugin basically allows you to create water ripple effects on the screen. You can set a combination using which, you can draw trails of ripples on your screen, just to entertain and relax yourself. Alternatively, you can enable the rain effect, which makes your desktop behave like the surface of a pond. The effect emulates the feeling of rain falling on your desktop screen. Do let me know if you find this useful in some way.
4. Wobbly Windows
This has been one of the most used useless Compiz plugins. Enabled in Ubuntu (pre-natty) by default, wobbly windows is a plugin that does what it says – it makes the windows wobble. Whenever you grab a window by the title bar, and try to drag it around, the window will stretch and wobble in different ways depending on which region is grabbed. Despite, the sheer uselessness of this plugin, it has been used and loved by quite a lot of Linux users. Even some Windows users are envying this nifty little feature the reason for which, I don't quite understand.
5. Firepaint
Firepaint is an eye candy plugin developed specially for arsonists and pyromaniacs. The plugin allows you to set fire to any part of your screen, with no practical utility whatsoever. I don't know if Firepaint works with Unity, but considering how buggy Unity is in Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal', you might sometimes feel like setting fire to parts of your desktop. A great way to give vent to your anger, but not something you should be enabling on your kid's desktop.
Written by: Abhishek, a regular TechSource contributor and a long-time FOSS advocate.
Say I have a movie or video playing in VLC (not in fullscreen, but in a window) so I can have a chat window open beneath it. The contrast between the dark of the video and the white of the chat window can be distracting, so I usually have the 'Negative' plugin invert the colors of the chat window; thus everything is dark and easier to look at.
It's a simple use of the plugin, but quite helpful.
Kadu instant messenger has a plugin called " water notify", which produce waves on system tray when someone wrote. Quite useful.
Exactly these "useless" plugins attract the attention of many Windows users to Linux.
Novice users love the fancy desktop - burning windows, wobbling windows, cube, rain, fire and whatever...
Like I said - it's a matter of preference.
Maybe the problem is not in the plugins, maybe it's you jun auza?
When you switch virtual desktops you could simply show the new virtual desktop leaving users wondering where their windows went. In fact, just showing the new desktop looks exactly the same as minimizing a maximized window in many occasions. It is a "now you see now you don't" magic act that gives you no clue how to go back.
With cube, or scrolling in the new desktop, there is no confusion, people can see where the windows went. There is a clear visual clue as to how to go back (obviously rotate the cube the other way).
Never forget that the "I" in GUI means "interface" -- the point is to connect how the computer works to how the user thinks. Anything that shortens the gap between those two things is useful in an interface.
The cube, therefore, is not useless. It enhances the way we can visualize multiple workspaces. I find it helpful when looking at my workspaces to get an overview of what I've got open where.
The other plugins are just fun to play with, and yes they have no practical use other than fooling around with.
The Desktop Cube has a few purposes: first of all it let's you switch between desktops, secondly it does so by providing a graphical interface that allows one to organize one's work and finally it looks pretty rad. People need a nice graphical interface, we are used to physical objects in our daily life, so we work more fluently when we can work with similar objects on our computers. Sure, other methods work as well (e.g. Desktop Wall) but they also have the drawback of zooming out a lot.
Same for Negative, others have said the same thing; but it's really nice when you're working late at night or trying to overlay a light window over a dark window. In the same way partial opaque windows might seem useless, but that just depends on how you use them.
Wobbly Windows is nice in some way(but it has it's drawbacks, it suffers from limit cycles in a lot of cases). But somehow I find that I'm quite attached to the fluent movement of my windows. It just feels more natural than rigid windows (but the actual use is limited indeed).
Fire can be nice if you have gesture recognition (e.g. EasyStroke) enabled and you want a nice way to visualize your strokes. There are some other means, but they generally look like 1995.
I'm not really using Fire and Water myself, but my fellow commenters have already shown they have uses for these plugins. And they have a valid point: eye candy attracts people (and also: if a program looks nice, people are more inclined to find it useful than if they have to work with legacy X apps).
I mean, almost all compiz plugins are shinny, pretty, glossy effects, but really: doest this effects are useful?
Some of them are useful, but the vast mayority are just shinny stuff for the linux newbie.
Also, saying that they are useless doesn't mean that they must disappear.
Bottom line; used intelligently and in conjunction with other desktop application the Cube can be very efficient and not distracting.
I find the wobbly windows gives a tactile feel to window manipulation. To me, it somehow seems more natural to see the window react to being dragged. When I use a computer without this plugin, I feel lost.
I have been known to occasionally use the rain effect as a screensaver.
If you turn down the switch time, the cube is no less effective than the wall for switching desktops.
As mentioned, negative helps viewing windows in low-light conditions.
Fire paint is a toy. Just because something isn't productive doesn't make it useless.
As we all know, most of these are just pretty things to make our desktop look better. They serve very little practical purpose (although obviously exceptions exist)
For a time, I did use Cube Atlantis in lieu of a wallpaper.
Doctor said it best -- "You forgot the most useless Compiz plugin of them all: Unity."
When using VMWare workstation full screen the guest OS captures the keys and most Linux-specific key combination are not passed to the UI. This includes the desktop switching hot keys which are the ones I most frequently use. The input focus to the guest has to be switched off first.
However, when the Cube is on and the margins activated to enable rotation, then the input focus is automatically switched back to the Linux desktop by moving the mouse to a screen edge and spinning the cube to the next/previous desktop. I think it's a convenient time-saver.
What about "Explode"?
The comments clued me in on actual uses for "Negative" and "Fire" when I really thought there was none and the Kadu "Water Notify" sounds ridiculously great.
This article has me playing with KWin now.
They all have Aesthetic appeal, which is why they are included and why they are used.
The Negative plugin is not for the purposes of Aesthetics, nor is it useless. It's designed to help those with eyes that can not see bright lights. It's like people with 20:20 vision claiming that Glasses are useless for people, when they themselves don't need them. I'm surprised you didn't find this out considering that it was labelled under the Accessibility section.
The cube and wobbly windows, while having no real extended purpose, is designed for those simple minded people who use Ubuntu for the whole Aesthetic appeal.
Having plugins like these is what sets Ubuntu from Windows. Have you ever seen a cube-like feature for Windows 7? Do you think they will have one any time soon?
The answer is No.
I do have 'edge flip pointer' enabled in ccsm, which means I can switch to the next workspace by moving the mouse to the right / left of the current workspace. Also I have 'edge drag n' drop' which is indispensible, as well as the more usual 'edge drag windows'.