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."
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
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: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.
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...
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 it tries for Windows API compatibility. The upcoming Windows APIs (called WinFX, which is
Well, for Mono lovers this is the reason to rejoice.
Re:Eye candy can make sense (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm fine with eye candy if it does something useful but if it doesn't then it doesn't belong, as a default, on my desktop. This thing looks cool but I don't see it being useful in of itself. Maybe someone will use it to create something useful though. I see 3D as being a good tool for looking at complex relationships but just replacing workspaces with a 3D cube seems pointless.
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 of our bug reports.
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:Eye candy can make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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: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.