Interview with QuinnStorm

Interview 23/07/2006
and.....quinn is a gril

XGLusers-Team:
What is your nationality?
QuinnStorm:
I am American.

XGLusers-Team:
For how long do you use linux ?
QuinnStorm:
As best as I can recall, around ten years. I started using linux as a kid (I am only 23 years old now)

XGLusers-Team:
When did you start with compiz and why?
QuinnStorm:
I discovered compiz not long after it was first released by Novell. At that point it was not very usable, and I waited a while. Once I got it up and running stably, I became very interested in using it and improving it, which led to the creation first of a thread on the ubuntu forums, then thanks to donation of server space, etc., we got the compiz.net forums set up. Since then development has moved pretty quickly. I had been wanting something like compiz for a long time really.

XGLusers-Team:
How many peoples work on the third-party?
QuinnStorm:
Hmm, that is a tough question…not only am I very bad with names, but I am just not sure, but to take a guess, at least five people contribute code, and many more contribute ideas, bugfixes, and now themes.

XGLusers-Team:
And what is the main target or “The Futur” of compiz (plugins etc.)? Which dev-line do u follow?
QuinnStorm:
The future, to me, is simply wherever the community really wants compiz to go. I try to keep things stable and usable in my repository/tree.

XGLusers-Team:
Is compiz stable? And what can you propose for beginners, is it usable?
QuinnStorm:
Well, a few bugs have crept in from davidr s latest work, but beyond that, compiz is very stable on supported hardware. We have some trouble with ATI, and the latest code has some bugs on AIGLX, but this will be fixed. The ATI issues depend on them. For beginners, I would advise starting with www.compiz.net, looking through the tutorials, and using dapper drake ubuntu linux, which has polished compiz packages easily available.

XGLusers-Team:
Ubuntu Dapper is not the only distribution which can handle xgl/aiglx/compiz. Which other distributions can you suggest?
QuinnStorm:
People have had good success running on gentoo, and I believe there is some support on SuSE.

XGLusers-Team:
I heard that there are some disagreements with David Reveman (Freedesktop) how represents the “firstparty”.Does this influence your work?
QuinnStorm:
What I do is do my best to keep in sync with the changes he adds to compiz, though few changes have managed to make it upstream to him. He seems to have a bit of a closed development model, though perhaps he is just too busy to really pay attention to everything that happens in the community. I have not talked to him directly so I’m not sure what his motivations are.

XGLusers-Team:
Many people want compiz like MS Vista or OSX. Is compiz going its own way?
QuinnStorm:
Well, my feeling is we should take the best features from both OSes, and implement them even better. I believe in making things as configurable and extendable as possible, which is, for example, why I tend to prefer KDE over GNOME

XGLusers-Team:
There are many wishes about new docks as plugin and there are some new non-compiz docks like Akamaru or Cairo-dock! Will the compiz-dock-plugin be renewed? Are there new developments?
QuinnStorm:
The compiz dock plugin is a development of ddave, who seems to be busy or missing. As far as using a dock with compiz, any of them should be possible, and given that XGL/AIGLX allow for easy compositing, a dock that shows window previews is quite possible. Either way, I do not think compiz itself has to support a dock, but if people want to work on it, that’d be great. As I said, I think it should be the users choice.

XGLusers-Team:
What do you think of the arise of all the new compiz-communities in all languages? Compiz-net seems to be the center of all?
QuinnStorm:
I think that what has happened is that because both I speak English, and most developers do (it seems to be the unofficial language of linux), work has centered around the English language community. This of course does not mean that other languages are to be excluded, and I am sure that users very much appreciate any effort toward support in other languages.

XGLusers-Team:
It is up to you if you want to say something to the community.
QuinnStorm:
The only thing I can say is I am flattered that everyone thinks I am so important, and I am very happy simply to be able to help. I want to thank each and every member of the community. I may have helped organize things, but there would have been nothing to organize without them.