Novell Makes Public Release of Xgl Code 339
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
Re:Window manager land (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Window manager land (Score:3, Interesting)
Which doesn't quite answer the question. Can *any* window manager be used, or only those that have incorporated the compositing code? Is it possible to use a standalone compositor (say, at the expense of some performance), or does it have to be part of the window manager? If it's the latter, than the obvious route is to make it a shared library, which the wm can dlopen() as appropriate. That way, you
Re:Window manager land (Score:3, Informative)
No.
Only Compiz; the different compositors are not feature compatible.
No.
Yes.
No.
No.
Re:Window manager land (Score:2)
Re:Window manager land (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Window manager land (Score:2)
Wrong. It is one possible design. The window manager and the compositor have to interact, that I'll grant you. But they don't necessarily have to be in the same process. There are many ways they could be communicating with each other -- using sockets, or shared memory, for example. Now for performance reasons, that might be impractical. As you say, I haven't worked on or with the code, so I don't know. But if that proved to be the
Re:Window manager land (Score:2)
Re:Window manager land (Score:2)
Open Source community had to complain loudly (Score:3, Interesting)
Eye candy can make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
desktop cube: old idea (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, something similar has been available at least since 2002: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
It's still cool of course, and it probably works much better with Xgl.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
3Dwm [chalmers.se] is much older than that. From the PDF available on their web page:
"Initiated in 1999 by Niklas Elmqvist and Robert Karlsson at Chalmers Medialab"
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Cairo, which is the closest Free Software equivalent of Avalon, also began back in 2003 [keithp.com]. However the comment you were not contradicting was about Vista, not Avalon.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
The FOSS community _has_ been taking this technology seriously, it's just not hit the main-stream. (Seems to be the case with most FOSS GUI stuff that Apple and Microsoft get there first with the shiny bits.)
From the screen shots I've seen of Vista it looks like the 3D UI features (e.g. 3D windows, etc) are ripped off Project Looking Glass and OS-X, both of which have b
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Codetek Virtual Desktop Pro [codetek.com]. I've moved beyond virtual desktops myself. I used to be incredible anal about my virtual desktops going so far as to label them by program type or even by program. When I switched to OS X from Linux two years ago I was annoyed by the lack of virtual desktops and focus follows mouse, but now with expose and the dock I find virtual desktops clunky and hard to use.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Why would you like to make lets say, your Firefox window transparent and having under that OpenOffice Word and under that your desktop image showing the moving world clock, what you will see at the end is, Nothing, just a mess of blended images.
Really, someone pl
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
It looks cools. I for one would like to see the unfocused windows become partially transparent. It would effectively differentiate the focused windows from the unfocused windows. You might say that "we don't need something like that". And you are right. But if I had to choose between two functionally identical systems, with one of them being gorgrous and the other one being ugly, I would choose the gorgerous system.
There's nothing wrong
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:3, Interesting)
And to be honest, that screenshot looks like crap and it's very unproductive IMO. Just because something looks like crap does not mean that it's "efficient". and just because something looks good does not mean that it's inefficient.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:2)
Microsoft tend to sit in the first camp, with a few lone voices in the second. Apple tend to be more in the second camp, but with a strong leaning towards the first. Most open source developers seem to be resolutely in either the first or third group.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about transparency isn't that you want to have all your windows transparent, it's that you want to be able to have one window open full screen and still be able to quickly reference another window.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
One of many reasons I hate click-to-focus, autoraise, and other things that force the window with focus to also be the on top.
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, at least Planet Penguin Racer (ex-Tuxracer) seemed to work fine, 3D acceleration and all..! :P
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
They are nice, tho fairly incomplete as far as r300 support goes. It is a real step forward tho, and the difference with pure software rendering is huge.
For those with slightly older cards, the difference is quite substantial as well. For the first time I have seen a 9200 perform at least good enough to be usable for things like enemy territo
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Informative)
Oh yeah, while I'm idly wondering, what are the odds of this making it into mainstream desktops ( stock gnome/kde )?
Well, to some extent it's already there: KWin uses COMPOSITE to do translucency and shadows, for example.
There are plans to extend use of these features in KDE 4. Zack Rusin from KDE, has been working on this sort of thing (you can see an interview with him from the Summer [ox.ac.uk]). There's also the Plasma [kde.org] project, which has beauty and usability as its key aims built in from the start.
And best
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2, Informative)
That's odd. What card(s)/motherboard(s)/kernel version(s)/nVidia driver version(s)?
They've always been perfectly stable with my GeForce 4 MX and GeForce FX 5700. A motherboard with Via AGP and an nForce 2 motherboard (all nVidia chipsets, nVidia AGP etc). Stable on Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, kernels compiled with GCC 3.3.x, 3.4.x, and now 4.1 beta, and stable with both the kernel's AGP driver and the nVidia driver's built in driver.
The only trouble I
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2)
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2)
Besides that, they still don't work well together with the 2.6 kernel's slightly changed ACPI model. Which makes them crash the system at resume time when using Software Suspend 2 (the driver doesn't POST and reinitialise the card like it should do).
The system is otherwise rock solid
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:2)
I belive it's the problem with your hardware, since I had similar issues. My max. uptime was 19 days after that a total freeze of the system (or at least X lockup). After one or two months my GeForce6600 got badly damaged http://janek.kozicki.pl/z/karta.jpg [kozicki.pl], and the reseller had replaced it. But my system still was unstable, and after some investigation the power supply was rep
Re:What kind of hardware is used? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience, stability hasn't been a problem for nVidia drivers released over the past few years (it was a problem 4 or 5 years ago but they seem to have sorted it). There are still some niggling bugs (not usually stability related) which would've been fixed a long time ago if the drivers were open though... I think a public bugzilla would also help so we can see the progress
Re:Use on thin clients? (Score:2)
Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
A little preemptive. (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Debian (Score:2, Funny)
I predict version 5 by that time, and Xgl will still be in an unstable apt repo.
Re:Debian (Score:2)
And packages.debian.org [debian.org] will still be broken, as will search.debian.org [debian.org]. Seriously, they can't have been working very hard on it. It'll be two years in May [archive.org].
Lazy asses.
Re:Debian (Score:3, Informative)
Clearly this is contradictory. If you "can't wait" until it hist Debian stable then you are looking for a release which is less stable than Debian stable.
The reality is, of course much simpler. Odds are that given it's optional "runs on top of Xorg" nature it will be available in Debian testing within 3 months and will consequently be released next time the 16000 or so Debian packages are declared stable enough for a release.
</TrollFodder>
Re:Debian (Score:2)
The last couple times I expressed disappointment in how far behind Debian Stable can get, I was marked as a troll several times over. And no, I won't load unstable or experimental software onto a server or workstation if I can avoid it, I'm just saying that Stable can move a bit more more often and not get so behind.
Re:Debian (Score:3, Informative)
It's just that their choice of names is a tad misleading.
Re:Debian (Score:2)
How about this for a solution. Debain make a stable server version and a stable desktop version. The server version can be as stable (or even more so) as the current stable releases. The stable desktop version would be released every 6 to 12 months and be pretty damn stable but not as stable as the server version. That way you get the benifit of most of the stability on the desktop without falling horribly far behind. I'm currently tracking unstable because I don't want to fall too far behind but I would pr
Come on guys, stop complaining! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is everyone complaining about Novell, graphics drivers, Debian, and lots of completely irrelevant topics?
Nothing can make Slashdotters happy...
Re:Come on guys, stop complaining! (Score:2, Funny)
Damn... Not only that, but also slashdotters' complaining about my complaining about their complaining...
very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
The main advantage is the sheer responsiveness. Everything feels more fluent, and lags are no longer noticeable.
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
Also, combined with the new X.Org extensions (Compositing, Damager, Cairo) it means, of course, eyecandy [novell.com] galore
Re: (Score:2)
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
I recall trying an addon for Windows that placed the desktop on a sphere. Nice, but not really useful. The spinning desktop on the video is very similar to 3D-Desktop [sourceforge.net], which only adds a nifty way to switch between virtual desktops. It's really cool to look at, but, say, an horizo
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
It basically says that, instead of making 2D windows go 3D, we should throw away the whole concept of "windows" and switch to multiple 3D layers instead
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:3, Interesting)
Functionally, the fastest way of switching virtual desktop is to simply make the old one disappear and the new one show up. This, however, makes most users think all their applications cr
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
This kind of thing isn't really 3D. Yes, it uses 3D visual effects and all, but the overal metaphor involved is still 2D. That's why you don't see much new functionality. Even the cube-rotation virtual desktop is just a visual cue for a 2D movement. Instead of thinking "that window is on desktop #2", the user can intuit "that window is to the right of where I am now". There's still a lot of
Re:very pretty, but what does it do? (Score:2)
It's hard to say what the benifits are because we haven't really had the tools to play with yet. What I think history shows though is that given the tools we generally find something to do with them. I admit that we don't always find something good to do with them but that's part of research. I think in 5 to 10 years we will look back and wonder how we ever worked on 2D desktops. I wouldn't like to say what the final 3D interface will look like though - my guess would be that this is the first step towards
Windows and OS X versions (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Finally! (Score:3)
GNOME Storage: Dead.
Beagle: Braindead.
Dashboard: oh dear christ.
The one thing about the whole GNOME project which is about to uproot me and make my move back to QT, is their extreme dependance on Mono. Not only does this put them in legal limbo, it doesn't fix the problems underneath, thus it's building a zoo on top of a house of cards.
I've played around with GNOME Storage, it was a disaster. (No wonder it died; installing a ke
Look is important (Score:5, Insightful)
Target Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
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
What's a Composite Manager? (Score:2)
Re:What's a Composite Manager? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Proprietary software (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Videos? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/ [novell.com]
Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE! (Score:3, Informative)
Not to take anything a
Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE! (Score:2)
Its a good day when you learn something new.
Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE! (Score:2)
Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE! (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Seeing how pretty basic 3D hardware can do this, and how it takes load off of the cpu, it is actually more likely to lower the hardware requirements for building a nice looking and responsive desktop with Linux.
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:2)
Also, if you have a nvidia hardware, you should disable it in xorg.conf.
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:2)
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, nVidia binary drivers still don't properly support glx (OpenGL) if compositing is enabled. The option you mention forces it, but you still get weird graphical glitches everywhere. For the time being, if you can live without glx, try compositing. Really cool stuff.
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:2, Informative)
It is a bit more complicated than that. Xgl doesn't work all by itself - it relies on having a working OpenGL enviroment. In this case - Xorg. So you run Xgl on top of Xorg and Xgl implements RENDER and GLX, by passing relevant calls to the OpenGL system of the underlying Xserver. COMPOSITE is also turned on by default in Xgl, but it does NOT use the underlying server's COMPOSITE.
It will take some time until all this is finally merged into Xorg and we have an OpenGL-accelerated desktop without the need of
Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Re:That's not progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Moral of the story: best and most usable interface design is not necessarily obvious at first glance.
Re:That's not progress (Score:2)
In fact, you sure it's not caused by all those delays? Having to click more times due to the sub menus not opening immediately - and thus you clicking to open them. More clicks = more chances for errors.
If you have problems releasing fast enough, have you tried it Apple/Mac style? Keep holding the button down after click, and release only when the cursor is on top of the item you want to select.
Re:That's not progress (Score:2)
Still a waste. (Score:2)
I wouldn't mind except that it's been 30 years, and computers are thousands of times faster with magnitudes more storage.
And here we are getting excited about transparent wobbly windows?
OK, maybe Mr Englebart was way too advanced for his time. So lets call it 20 years since Apple, Amiga, Atari etc. If we have such low expectations no wonder we're still stuck with such crappy automotive and aerospace tech too.
Re:That's not progress (Score:2)
What? I think you haven't tried the xcompmgr style setup at all, or else you wouldn't be making this IMHO very un-informed rant! How can offloading the compositing to hardware that actually has specialized circuitry to deal with is be a waste of CPU??? In my experience it actually save gobs of CPU for the simple fact that expose events are reduced to a fraction of what they currently are!! No excessive
Re:That's not progress (Score:2)
How is all that animation stuff going to make things faster? It's faster to just display/vanish a window immediately, rather than draw the animations. You could of course do the animations in a "ghostlike/background" way, and allow immediate access to whatever is now actually on top, but the animations could still be distracting and get in the way.
Experienced[1] workers really wanting to do stuff faster should get rid of these "cutscenes".
Now, somethi
Re:competing with cairo? (Score:2, Informative)