Novell Makes Public Release of Xgl Code

hamfactorial writes "Novell has announced the public availability of the Xgl code, an openGL accelerated X server layer. Available binaries ought to be coming soon for distributions running the modular X.org 7.0 release (possibly 6.9, though unconfirmed). A temporary page for Xgl information is up at the openSUSE website. This is the same code that was running in the Novell Linux Desktop 10 preview videos as seen earlier. Further information is also available at Miguel De Icaza's blog."

Window manager land

Should I kill my fluxbox and use compiz as my default window manager ? Or can compiz actually live along side a normal windowmanager which has about half a year of short-cuts that I use heavily ?

I would love if someone could actually tell me if fluxbox (or indeed xfwm4) will work with XGl out of the box.

Re:Window manager land

Compiz is just a compositing manager. As I understand it, it exists independently of Metacity or any other window manager you choose to use.

You understand incorrectly. Compiz is both a window manager and a compositing manager. There were technical reasons as to why it was done this way. Metacity will also be incorporating composite code directly rather than have a separate userspace process.

Videos?

This is the same code that was running in the Novell Linux Desktop 10 preview videos as seen earlier

Could someone post the URL where these videos are available?

Re:Videos?

Can't be bothered to check the article links hey? Check the Novell link.

http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/ [novell.com]

Eye candy can make sense

Most people who dislike eye candy do so because it slows things down or clutters the UI. Watching these videos and seeing what Apple has done with OS X made me realize that eye candy can make the interface more intuitive when done right. The virtual destop cube -thingy really looked like something usable for a change.

I suspect the possibilities created by hardware accelerated UIs will lay the groundwork for a whole new set of UI paradigms, but the real implications are probably still years away.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

I agree. Furthermore, the current state actually does not make much sense. Considering that, for example, nvidia-chips do not have a dedicated 2D core anymore, the driver has to emulate 2D for the legacy 2D APIs that have been used until now. Essentially, dedicated 2D development is dead; its nonsense to have a 2D core since the 3D one can do everything 2D-related much faster and with extras like blending or shaders.

So right now we have an artificial distinction between 2D and 3D. The vendors have to deal with composite stuff AND with opengl acceleration, sometimes simultaneously. Using OpenGL as the base for everything is much better, since opengl already has a client/server-architecture, driver development gets easier, X as a whole becomes leaner, responsiveness and look-n-feel of X improve, and the CPU does not have to deal with fake transparency stuff.

So its all about moving the 2D/3D-distinction away from the driver into the X server.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

OS X is fine for users trying to run two or three windows but for serious users that run ten or twenty programs at once it just is in the way

You need to learn how to use the OS X desktop more effectively then.

1. Map your Exposé functions to the screen corners from the "Dashboard and Exposé" option in System Preferences. I've got the following mapped: Top-Left-Application-Windows, Top-Right-All-Windows, Bottom-Left-Start-Screen-Saver, Bottom-Right-Desktop. Its way faster than having to hunt out F9-12 between mouse movements.

2. Make better use of Command-H to hide an app and its associated windows instead of iconizing. It keeps the dock from getting cluttered up

3. If things are getting too busy on the desktop use Option-Command-H to hide all the other apps except the one you're working on. Instant clarity.

4. Remember that you can bring an app (and all its associated windows) to the foreground by clicking the app icon in the dock.

As a serious user who's been using Mac OS X for 3-4 years now, full time, for both work and home I can tell you that the OSX desktop does not get in the way if you make full use of the available features. On the contrary, its a pleasure to use.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

What bothers me is that the FOSS community didn't seem to take this technology seriously until Microsoft announced it was going into Vista.

What bothers me is that you can make such statements with such conviction when they are entirely untrue. The FOSS community have been working on features like this since at least early 2004. The Xorg/XFree86 split was partially due to arguments over the Composite and Render extensions that are necessary foundations for this demo.

This technology hasn't appeared on your radar because you aren't looking at the right places. If you read xorg-devel, or planet gnome, or freedesktop, then you would be aware that this technology has been treated seriously. The Novell demo came from out of the blue but the FOSS community has been working on the technology for ages.

Finally!

Real Transparency! But who's providing the hardware accel? This is still kinda sticky, right now your choices boil down to nvidia's closed source driver (not that I have a problem with that), ATI's bug fest (sorry, but it's true), or a really old Radeon. Oh yeah, while I'm idly wondering, what are the odds of this making it into mainstream desktops ( stock gnome/kde )?

Whoa

This is a great advertisement for Novell here - their servers have lasted something like ten minutes already after posting 4 videos on Slashdot!

A little preemptive.

"Xgl has already been checked into the public repositories, Compiz will be checked in after David Reveman's presentation at the X conference."

Which is Feb, 8th at 10am PST. [x.org]. Also the XGL code has been available for some time. Browse the CVS [freedesktop.org]. I'm somewhat expecting an update of the code tomorrow too.

Debian

Wow! I can't wait until this hits Debian stable, probably in the Debian 15.8 release in 2028.

Wow

After watching some of the video (still up too), I'm impressed. While eye candy isn't always the best to create just to have it, I think this is more a case of making a more productive experience. The less time it takes to go switching between applications to look at some information the better.

Then again, guess I'll have to go get that high end video card just to run the next distro. :)

Re:Wow

Then again, guess I'll have to go get that high end video card just to run the next distro. :)

No, actually not. The rendering presented in the video does not need a 7800. This is basic 3D rendering most on-board graphics chipsets can handle. This functionality has been around for a decade in consumer cards.

Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite?

=======xorg.conf=======
Section "Extensions"
              Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
=======================

Does this mean glx module and Composite finally play nice without death to X? I'm so totally confused.

Come on guys, stop complaining!

This is great news! Weren't we waiting for the Xgl?

Why is everyone complaining about Novell, graphics drivers, Debian, and lots of completely irrelevant topics?

Nothing can make Slashdotters happy...

very pretty, but what does it do?

I watched the demo movies, the last one (Spinning Cube) especially looks quite impressive.

However, I am wondering if the step from 2D to 3D desktop is as significant as say, going from commandline to GUI.

It doesn't seem like these 3D desktops actually offer much more functionality than existing 2D desktops. For example, the screen captures of Looking Glass 3d desktop from Sun doesn't seem to offer much more than just some eye candies. Or in case of the spinning cube demo, it doesn't seem to offer (functionally) more than virtual desktops, essentially a fancy way of changing from one desktop to another, which probably can still be done faster with some keyboard shortcut.

I am trying not to sound like some diehard stubborn conservative who wants to bring back the glory days of command line only interface, rather, I am asking if 3D desktops will change the way that we interact with computers, in the sense that barely anyone remember what it was like to work in DOS? Is this a step towards to (gasp shock horror) VR-based interfacing? Will a new hardware tool be needed like the mouse was necessary for the transition away from commandline?

nothing but impressed

I've been following this for the past week and having seen tons of videos and I must say that I am nothing but impressed. I recently upgrade my computer with an Nvidia 6800 GS and was hoping to try out composite (since I had an ATi card before). Although it was pretty stable, I found it to be rather buggy and even sometimes slow (even with this video card and an AMD 3000 with 1GB OCZ Premier, etc, etc). I really hope that Xgl will prove to be more powerful, more efficient and less buggy. Kudos to Novell.

Windows and OS X versions

I think what will be more important than XGL will be the Windows and OS X versions; the currently available free X11 servers on those platforms tend to be slow and feature-limited. Apple's X11, for example, doesn't handle international keyboard input correctly, doesn't implement RANDR, and doesn't adapt to changes in screen resolution correctly.

Finally!

I've been waiting a long time for this. And this [gnome.org], and this [beaglewiki.org], and this [nat.org].

I'd sure like to see 3d GTK+ widgets and window decoration, all following the same global illumination, complete with specular maps [3dtotal.com] and all the advanced pixel shader techniques available the desktop could become truly beautiful.

Look is important

I can't understand why there is so many posts saying that eye candy are not important. For people who can't judge the internal quality of a software, how it looks is what tell them if it's good or not. You can't impress a PHB with some C code, but you can sure impress him with a lot of eye candy. I need this very badly to be able to "sell" linux to my client as a desktop and I need it BEFORE Microsoft do it.

Target Vista

The target surely seems to be Vista. If Linux did not do this it would have meant that Vista would have a free ride with fancy hardware accelerated 3D transparent glassy glossy grossy interfaces. For J6P, the OS is only as good as it looks.

Since Miguel is involved I sure hope we can target all this hardware accelerated goodness with Mono as well. Mono makes making Linux apps amazingly easy, atleast for those of us with years of Windows programming background. This step is absolutely essential for Mono while it tries for Windows API compatibility. The upcoming Windows APIs (called WinFX, which is .Net based) include something called Avalon, which benefits (and at times requires) hardware accelerated graphics. If X did not have hardware accelerated graphics, this would have been a block in the progress of Mono.

Well, for Mono lovers this is the reason to rejoice.

What?

people are always trying to speak their mouths out don't you guys think?

novell is surely trying to make more people adopt Linux, and that's quite good in the overall .... i'm no die hard mac user [had a powermac 8500 for a while, just to see what it had...ended up boosting Debian in it] but i frankly admit that those features like Exposé truly make it easier to change windows, specially if you're of the coder or attention disorder-type [loads of text editors opened and browser windows/tabs/ whatever] , so , if it adds something to our beloved system, why brag ?!

don't get me wrong, i just felt like it.

Composite

For those of you looking transparencies, the new NVIDIA drivers are wonderful. Just enable the composite extention in your xorg.conf file, and KDE will start to look wonderful after you go into System Settings -> Desktop -> Window Behavior -> Translucency.

What's a Composite Manager?

I know what a window manager is, and I understand the idea of a resolution-independent GL display layer, but would someone mind filling me in on why we now need a composite manager as well as a window manager?

Temporary page?

A temporary page for Xgl information is up at the openSUSE website.

That is no temporary page. It is a Wiki page on the openSUSE website. No idea why the article talks about a temporary page.

Heavens, what a blatant rip.

My gosh, that's what I call a blatant Rip of Apples Expose. But it's cool. A rip - but a cool one nonetheless.
Goes to show a basic rule: A flat-out rip is allways better than a sad and sorry failure at rying to be 'innovative'. Yet that Novell lacks the balls to openly admit that it's inspired by OS X and Expose goes to show what losers they are.

At last, finally OSS has beaten Microsoft in their prime field of expertise. Copying stuff from Apple. :-)

GPL, MIT, or BSD?

Sorry, but I didn't see which license they put it under. Slashdot is notoriously bad about having headlines that say some project has been open-sourced without telling us what license is used. This is just another example.

What it's all for

This is not -just- for gewizz graphics. Applications (firefox)
will be using these interface (via cairo) in the near future. See for instance
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2005/0 4/glimpse_of_the.html [mozillazine.org]
This allows a much more sophisticated 2D drawing model with layers.
Several bug fixes to acid2 errors http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/ [webstandards.org]
will then be "free".

Look at the java2D demos too to get ideas of what you can do with
this, within a 2D window.

Progress?

From what I can tell, if Xgl becomes the de facto standard, it's going to become impossible to have a usable Linux desktop without non-free drivers. How is this progress?

This is nice...now do something with it

Presumably now all the building blocks are in place to do some *real* cutting edge interface design/research. OpenGL-based toolkits, check. Dual-core, dual-processor machine, check. SLI video cards, check. 4+ gig of memory, check. *Now* let the fun begin.

Seriously though, while those specs I mentioned are pretty high, they're not totally out of reach or relegated to a Pixar workstation or whatever. I would like to think that there is a sea of PhD dissertations ready to be written on what could be the next interface we all use, replacing the desktop metaphors. With the machine I mentioned, a researcher's flights of fantasy could really become working reality, and while not everything is going to pan out, it's important to try. No longer can anyone hide behind the "hardware/operating system isn't up to the task" bullsh*t.

You've got the machine, you've got the OS, you've got the toolkits. Stop following Apple's cues...start leading with your own.

Exposé is patented

Well, I hope Novell is ready for a legal fight with Apple.

Apple has a patent [uspto.gov] on the Exposé behavior.

fonts still suck

Any chance that this new 3d accelerated rendering can help make anti-aliased fonts actually look good ? Unbelieveable that OS X and Windows have better looking (smoother) anti-aliased fonts then linux ever dreamed. I thought I remember reading about something on linux that could change all that. It might be called Cairo or something? Does anybody know anything about this?

Proprietary software

From the article: "...we're not going to cede 3D graphics acceleration to proprietary software."

But will we be required to use a proprietary video driver to get it? It would be nice if Novell were putting its resources behind open source drivers or pressuring the release of hardware specs. Proprietary firmware doesn't bother me at all, but the drivers (both kernel and user mode) for open source systems need to be open source themselves.

Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE!

The project is fresh out development and your already whining for what it might not have.

And to think when the news first broke that this would be initially developed in house there was outrage, but you comment exemplifies why they started development away from the "community".

Question is are you going to do anything to help the project?

Re:Novell

Yes, you have successfully gotten past my built-in Bayesian filter. *Now* will you go to your room? :)

The October 2006 Uber-distro

I know people like to say that linux isn't "at war" with windows for market-share, but I believe that the more people who use linux and the greater the mind-share it has in the world, the faster it will develop and improve.
this inevitably means taking current windows users from microsoft as well as bringing in new users, and doing so BEFORE the titanic marketing push that will be the November/December Vista release.
this puts major distro's like SUSE/K-Ubuntu/Mandriva who have an October release schedule in a very strong position, especially given the raft of revolutionary technologies that are being released in the next 6 months.
these are the technologies I hope will make it into the October releases in time the Years-end royal-rumble:
KDE4
Reiser4
Samba4
Compiz + X.org 7.1
Koffice 2.0 + the new Kitchensync
Kernel with full support for nVidia DDR2 A64 chipsets
nVidia graphics drivers supportting Unified Shader videocards (i know it won't be packaged)
nVidia motherboard drivers supporting all chipset features (ditto above)
Openoffice 2.1?
GCC 4.1+

Re:That's not progress

Just to point out that it can be quite beneficial to have a slight pause before submenus open - it prevents button-bounce from causing you to select the first item in the menu immediately instead of having a chance to choose one ... yes I have had that problem personaly when menu delays weren't setup correctly in a program and it was a real sumbitch to use the damned thing.

Moral of the story: best and most usable interface design is not necessarily obvious at first glance.

Re:That's not progress

The eye candy is only there to get people to look at it. However, the underlying technology here is NOT wasting CPU. In fact, its taking advantage of the increasingly beefy GPUs in modern PCs to offload as much as possible from the CPU. Demos are always there to impress, watching someone get through their daily grind faster doesn't make for a good video.

Re:That's not progress

Because moving the processing to the GPU wastes so much CPU...

Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE!

3D does work on ATI cards (at least using the open source driver) for large screen resolutions using MergedFB. You're correct that there is a limit to area for 3D support, but a higher resolution still works, it's just only applications within that region have working 3D acceleration (anything outside that region just appears black).