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."

Re:Videos?

[Organic_Info]

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

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

A little preemptive.

[Stalyn]

"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.

Re:Wow

[ardor]

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.

Re:Finally!

[sumi-manga]

I believe [linuxedge.org] it can be installed on gnome.

Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite?

[Mo6eB]

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 running 2 Xservers, but for the time being, if you want (somewhat) stable COMPOSITE with GLX, this is the only way.

nothing but impressed

[x_codingmonkey_x]

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.

Re:Finally!

[crwl]

The open source R300 drivers (http://r300.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] - now part of Mesa/DRM + X.Org source trees) for the 9600 and 9800 series of ATi Radeons seem to be currently at least somewhat usable.

I mean, at least Planet Penguin Racer (ex-Tuxracer) seemed to work fine, 3D acceleration and all..! :P

Finally!

[sepelester]

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:What kind of hardware is used?

[Sterling Christensen]

From my experience the nvidia drivers aren't very stable.

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 remember was console framebuffer not working on the 4 MX, and nVidia drivers at the time (not a problem now) not being compatible with the 4K stacks option introduced in kernel 2.6.6.

Here's a good place for nVidia Linux driver help:
NVIDIA Linux Forum @ NVnews.net [nvnews.net]

Re:Window manager land

[nathanh]

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.

Re:OMG XINERAMA PLEASE!

[ooze]

You are aware that your sig line is originally attributed to Diogenes of Sinope. And Tyler and Diogenes have really really much in common (to the point where you could say Chuck wanted to create a Diogenes with a masterplan and cool fighting skills). Except that Diogenes was a real person (in both senses, he wasn't the imaginary evil twin of anyone and also not a character in some fictional work). At least there are more indications for Diogenes to have actually existed than for Jesus.

Not to take anything away from the movie...

Re:Debian

[Karora]

<TrollFodder>

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:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. GLX still doesnt play ball nicely with composite enabled, BUT, it doesn't have to. XGL is another X server running atop of Xorg's X server - so it has it's own composite implementation. In other words, you still have to disable the composite extension from xorg.conf, but it really doesnt matter, because XGL will be able to produce eye candy anyway.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Nat Friedman was using a Centrino Vaio laptop with 512 mb of RAM and a GeForce 6xxx card for his preview demo of Novell Linux Desktop 10 at the Linux Solutions show last week in Paris (and it was pretty fluid). I don't know which driver he used though.

desktop cube: old idea

[raboofje]

The virtual destop cube -thingy really looked like something usable for a change.

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:Finally!

[PhilRod]

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 of all, you can get involved [kde.org] and help make KDE 4 the best ever!

Re:Debian

[muyuubyou]

That may be a valid point for libraries or server-related packages, but for anything that has to do with a windows manager, you're just wrong about your concept of stable. You're looking at "unstable" or "testing", or Ubuntu which isn't any more stable than any of those two BTW.

It's just that their choice of names is a tad misleading.

Re:Window manager land

[nathanh]

Which doesn't quite answer the question. Can *any* window manager be used,

No.

or only those that have incorporated the compositing code?

Only Compiz; the different compositors are not feature compatible.

Is it possible to use a standalone compositor (say, at the expense of some performance),

No.

or does it have to be part of the window manager?

Yes.

If it's the latter, than the obvious route is to make it a shared library,

No.

which the wm can dlopen() as appropriate.

No.

That way, you avoid having a fork of the compositing code in each wm.

Too late.

Re:Is this mean, I can finally enable Composite?

[m50d]

It isn't properly supported - any GLX stuff won't have transparency, and, because of how composite works, you may well find that if you hide glx windows the glx stuff is still visible on top of everything else. But it mostly works, and I know I only use glx for fullscreen things anyway.

Re:That's not progress

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Eye candy can make sense

[Macka]

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:competing with cairo?

[nickallen]

Cairo is a 2D graphics library for applications to draw things on the screen and Xgl is an X server that can process the cairo requests (usually through the XRender extension) and accelerate them through the graphics hardware. So they are completly different things and there is no waste of resources. In other words Xgl is an implementation of the X Window System and Cairo can output to many different windowing systems as well as X (eg MS Windows or Mac OS X).