Beryl and Vista, Eyecandy City

Today is Microsoft’s “big day.”  After over 5 years they are releasing their new desktop operating system.  Vista is much more of an evolutionary than revolutionary upgrade.  I have been using the Business Edition of Vista since mid November, and aside from the Aero eycandy interface change and relocation of many settings I don’t really see too much that is new.  In the meantime the Linux folk have continued to  improve the eye candy offerings on that platform as well.  This morning I installed Beryl on my Ubuntu desktop and it looks pretty good.  I used compiz / xgl a while ago and it was pretty but buggy.  Beryl, which is a fork of the compiz project, seems to be a much more tight and slick project.

Who wins this eyecandy war.  I would have to give to the Beryl folk, as it seems like a much more natural fit.  One should note that OS X has had fun visual effects for years.