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

[Gopal.V]

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.

Eye candy can make sense

[Max Romantschuk]

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.

very pretty, but what does it do?

[semiotec]

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?

Windows and OS X versions

[idlake]

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.

Re:Window manager land

[hamfactorial]

Compiz is just a compositing manager. As I understand it, it exists independently of Metacity or any other window manager you choose to use. Compiz should be similar in functionality to xcompmgr or the compositing manager built into xfwm. I don't think it will require shortcuts or much hackery to function on non-GNOME desktops. The window manager demoed appears to be Metacity, and as such, I can't see why Novell would be pushing for even more fragmentation in the Linux world. If anything, they would be in favor of easy-to-use interfaces that will serve to promote their Novell Linux Desktop 10 product, or whatever it will be called. Indirectly, that benefits us, and you as the non-GNOME user.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

[nathanh]

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.

Re:very pretty, but what does it do?

[GauteL]

There are many things this can do. Functionally, the fastest way of minimising a window is to simply make it disappear. This, however, can be confusing because it is not obvious where the window went. A fancy window shrinking effect like on OS X thus improves usability. If done correctly you will not lose time on it either.

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 crashed. Using virtual desktops is something only geeks have used before. Maybe this fancy cube effect makes the virtual desktops obvious to the average user and thus makes them start using them as well.

These fancy effects thus show transition between states something which makes the connection between the states more obvious to the user.

The wobbling windows I don't know. They might be just a proof of concept. Although some of the developers have stated that it gave each window a real and tangible quality, like a sheet of paper being moved. It certainly shouldn't be excaggerated, but maybe it does help?

Re:What's a Composite Manager?

[thebluesgnr]

"My understanding while talking to David Reveman this past week was that the complexity of keeping a compositing manager as a separate process from the window manager was too high (too much bookkeeping that made it error prone, and there were some fundamental problems that he could not solve). So some time ago he abandoned his effort to patch Metacity and have a separate composition manager, reduced the complexity and eliminated a lot of bugs and the source of these bugs. That is what David explained to me, but I can only understand about 50% of the technical stuff that he talks about, so keep that in mind." http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/ 2006-February/msg00120.html [gnome.org]

Re:Window manager land

[Tet]

Metacity will also be incorporating composite code directly rather than have a separate userspace process.

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 avoid having a fork of the compositing code in each wm.

Re:Window manager land

[arkanes]

For a lot of effects, the comp manager and the window manager have to have a high degree of interaction and knowledge of each other. For example, in some CVS versions of Metacity, the window can be transparent while the window decorations are not. This is impossible without merging the comp manager and the window manager. It gets even more complicated when you bring Xgl into the mix. This is not a "braindead" design. It is, in fact, the only possible design. Which you'd know if you worked on or with these projects instead of high handed proclamations about sanity.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

[cyclomedia]

it's also worth bearing in mind that the desktop is *already* 3d... you have windows on top of other windows, objects in front and behind of each other, it simply lacks perspective.

Re:Eye candy can make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

What about those who (like me) dislikes eyecandy for the reason they serve only to distract you from the actual work at hand ?

Then you don't enable it. The answer is so blindingly obvious that I suspect you posted just to let everyone know how much you disdain eyecandy (as it distracts you from your single emacs window in twm) in an attempt to get precious "slashdot cred". I swear, "eyecandy distracts me from my work" is the new "I ditched TV ages ago and I'm all the better for it blah blah blah".

Open Source community had to complain loudly

[billybob2]

Novell was initially reluctant to release this code -- after all, they didn't have to because the X11 license doesn't contain any forced sharing, copyleft [gnu.org] provisions. The Open Source community had [livejournal.com] to complain [blogspot.com] loudly [blogspot.com] before Novell decided it didn't want to risk losing support from independent developers. One reason they might have wanted to keep the modifications closed was to make a big splash for the release of the Novell Linux Desktop. Another possible reason is that Ximian (and Nat Friedman, who was Ximian's CEO before Ximian was bought by Novell) that long tried to undermine [linuxnovice.org] KDE, the Free Desktop System that currently has a slight edge in terms of popularity. By keeping the source closed, they would have prevented KDE developers from incorporating XGL into their windowing system, leaving KDE slightly behind Gnome in terms of eyecandy for a period of time.

Re:Heavens, what a blatant rip.

[thebluesgnr]

"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."

Have you looked at the code?

http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/glxcompmgr/plu gins/expose.c?rev=1.2&view=markup [freedesktop.org]

The plugin is called, let's see, expose. (it will probably be renamed due to legal reasons though).

Re:Eye candy can make sense

[10Ghz]

Yeah, I need every bit of CPU-power to surf the web, draw images, check email... I guess I could reduce my compile-times by 0.3% if I eliminated all eye-candy. But OTOH, that would make my computer-usage a bit less enjoyable, so I fail to see the benefit.

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.