Remember when it was a big deal that Ubuntu was going to include Compiz/Beryl/Compiz Fusion out of the box? It wasn’t long ago, actually, yet Linux desktop effects have come a long way since then. We’ve gone from desktop effects on Linux being a cool add on you could install if you wanted to do it yourself, to having it be part just another part of the Linux desktop.

Still, this time has not been smooth sailing for Compiz/Beryl/Compiz Fusion, as you  might guess from the name assortment. First there was Compiz and then Beryl. Then those became Compiz Fusion. Finally, some smaller projects branched off of that, forming branches such as Compiz++.Throughout all this, Linux desktop effects have continued to move forward, but, perhaps, not quite as fast as they could have.

Luckily, it appears that Compiz will once again be a single project, thanks to some recently proposed plans to merge the various forks into a single code base and give the project a new direction.

These plans look promising and I am hopeful that Compiz, as it will now be called, will shed its past project troubles and move on to provide better desktop effects for Linux, one of the coolest and most useful pieces of most distributions.

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