The Ubuntu Technical Board voted yesterday to ship Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy") with Compiz enabled by default. Although Compiz has been featured in Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe prerelesases, the board has had difficulty determining whether or not it is reliable and functionally complete enough to warrant inclusion in the final release.

Compiz is a compositing window manager that includes a number of highly sophisticated visual effects like window shadows, transparency, and desktop zooming. In the Tribe prereleases, basic visual effects are enabled by default on supported hardware, and more sophisticated visual effects—like wobbling windows—can be enabled with a configuration utility. A compositing window manager was originally planned for inclusion in Ubuntu 7.04, but it was delayed because the software wasn't considered mature enough.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of technical issues that detract from the viability of Compiz as a default option.

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