A few years ago the latest and greatest in desktop computing was the announcement of three-dimensional desktop environments. Much like you’d see in a video game, people were spouting about how your desktop applications could be manipulated in a 3D environment, making access to applications much more intuitive, thereby increasing productivity.

Over the last few years, these systems have been maturing, and I think it’s finally time to say that they’re ready. With the (not so) recent release of Windows Vista and its inclusion of Aero, the ongoing development of Compiz, beryl and now Compiz Fusion (beryl originally branched from Compiz, and now they’ve recombined to create Compiz Fusion), and of course the ever-present prettiness of Mac OS X, it’s finally time to get these 3D systems running on mums and dads computer.

Trying out the open-source alternatives a few years ago (even a few months ago) was a headache of an experience for some, myself included. Making sure your X server was configured correctly, obtaining the correct drivers for your video hardware, and then trawling through config files for the sake of a pretty desktop? Not really worth it. That, and the fact that in the early days, these systems (Compiz especially) would randomly crash, losing you all your work… hardly productive.

Now though, I’m pleased to tell you that Compiz Fusion is very, very mature. I installed it with a single command. It ran with another single command. No configuration, no mucking about. It’s now running, and is running quite reliably. If you want to see what kind of effects you can enable with these systems, all you need to is visit YouTube and type in the appropriate search term.

The best feature of Compiz Fusion by far (stolen/shared with Mac OS X) is the “expose” feature, which enables you to mouse over to the corner of the screen, and all your windows are presented to you in small, iconified format such that you can click on any of them and immediately switch to it. No wasting time tabbing through silly alt-tab menus, no wasting time trying to find which one of the many window tabs in your taskbar is the one you’re actually after!

See what I mean?

Also I love the funky icon bar down the bottom which is basically an index of all my open windows — no messy application bars and ambiguous title names, I can just mouseover and see for myself what’s in each window!