So
Beryl (a fork off of Compiz) and
Compiz are now merging under the name Compiz Fusion. The name isn't all that great but from the looks of the preliminary demos there will be some really sweet 3d desktop stuff for linux soon. If you run Beryl already some of this you will have already seen but there definitely seems to be a smoothness that isn't seen today. Also check out the movie playing while in the tile mode, damn cool.
[youtube]E4Fbk52Mk1w[/youtube]