Fun with XGL

[Vogateer]

If any of you haven't tried this, it's got me giddy as a schoolgirl. There's a live CD out there for anyone with a linux compatible nVidia or ATI card, and it's working great on my computer. It's based on gentoo, but don't worry guys, you don't have to compile anything. I truly like all the little eyecandy effects. It really seems to give gnome a professional polish that always seemed to be missing for me. Of course, there's no accounting for taste.

I'm planning on leaving my torrent up for quite a while. Wouldn't want to deprive anyone of this sort of fun. Here's the link for the torrent file:

http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=1604

And have fun. I might leave this up for a couple of days. I'm posting from the live CD right now, of course. How sweet it is.

[Ryochan7]

I have already tried XGL on Arch but I will check that live CD out just to see how XGL runs on different environments. Here are links to a couple of screenshots of my XGL experience. I like XFCE more than I like GNOME so that is why I used XFCE while I took these screenshots.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e312/ ... -sexar.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e312/ ... review.jpg

[Vogateer]

Looking good. I liked the look of gnome in this live cd, and may give it a whirl eventually if I get bored waiting for KDE4. Just a warning, though, sound doesn't seem to be working on this live cd. Of course, with XGL, sound really isn't the point, but they're aware of the problem at kororaa, and sounds like they're working on it.

[Patrick]

I downloaded and burned the CD. Tried it my laptop (cheap sis video card) and my Dell workstation (cheapo integrated Intel videocard) and neither worked. I'll have to try it out tonight at home on my workstation (nvidia card).

[Wally Balljacker]

Wow, this is awesome. I'd love to get this running on my machine.

[Vogateer]

Patrick, would have loved to have heard that this would work on a non nVidia or non ATI card, but the site said it wouldn't work on anything but nVidia or ATI. There are even a few cards from ATI and nVidia that apparently don't work, but most do.

Speaking of laptops, does any laptop have nVidia or ATI graphics in it that linux can use for openGL? I've never looked into it, but that would be interesting to know. I've always thought Gnome looked decent, at least, but this almost puts it up there with OS X for good looks in my opinion.

[Patrick]

Patrick, would have loved to have heard that this would work on a non nVidia or non ATI card, but the site said it wouldn't work on anything but nVidia or ATI. There are even a few cards from ATI and nVidia that apparently don't work, but most do.

Speaking of laptops, does any laptop have nVidia or ATI graphics in it that linux can use for openGL? I've never looked into it, but that would be interesting to know. I've always thought Gnome looked decent, at least, but this almost puts it up there with OS X for good looks in my opinion.

Works on my workstation. Yes it has whobbly windows and the cube change for virtual desktop switching. And it has nice fade ins/out when opening and closing apps. Besides that it really doesn't do much. I'm not really that impressed. Sorry.

The laptop I installed Kubuntu on for my co-workers kid had an ATI card with 3D acceleration. It was a Sony Vaio that was a couple years old.

[CptnObvious999]

Works on my workstation. Yes it has whobbly windows and the cube change for virtual desktop switching. And it has nice fade ins/out when opening and closing apps. Besides that it really doesn't do much. I'm not really that impressed. Sorry.

This is just a test bed. The real usage will be in KDE4 and some newer version of Gnome (I think), thats where it will become more integrated and more functional.

[Vogateer]

. Besides that it really doesn't do much. I'm not really that impressed. Sorry.

Hell, nothing to be sorry about. They are just toys, and I'll probably tire of them myself after a while. Just like how I turn on transparency and drop shadows in KDE 3.5, and the second things start acting funny, it gets turned off and I never really miss it. But my own use of these thing aren't really what I care about, and this might actually be used for more useful purposes in the future. Looks are very important to non geeks, and most people associate that polished look with professionalism, no matter what the product. "If it looks like crap, then it probably is." I think I will be able to get more people interested in at least trying something like Ubuntu out if I can show them wobbly windows and spinning cubes first, to get their attention, and then they might actually pay attention enough to pretend they give a tenth of a shit about other things in linux that matter to me, like security, stability and choice.

After working with people who know nothing about computers, I will also say that virtual windows, which I use quite often, will never really work for ordinary people without some sort of visual cue like the animation into the taskbar, the spinning cube or 3ddesktop. Many people at work can't even follow the window down into the dock of OS X so that they know where it's gone, so the more I see this, the more I say that every little bit helps.

[tarball]

I agree for the sake of a bit of eye candy there isn't much to get excited about.

The point of all this is off-loading processing to the GPU. How does your processor usage look when your windows are wobbling?

[CptnObvious999]

I agree for the sake of a bit of eye candy there isn't much to get excited about.

The point of all this is off-loading processing to the GPU. How does your processor usage look when your windows are wobbling?

At 0% usage. (Im not kidding I have checked with top)

[Wally Balljacker]

Oh man, I love this. I'm watching a DLTV video clip in fullscreen on my desktop while posting here in a transparent Firefox window on top of it. Having true transparency like this gives you so much more functionality. Instead of having a video windowed next to my browser, I can put them right on top of each other.

[Vogateer]

I agree for the sake of a bit of eye candy there isn't much to get excited about.

The point of all this is off-loading processing to the GPU. How does your processor usage look when your windows are wobbling?

Yeah, I forgot to mention that even with all the effects, things definitely felt snappy. I didn't monitor CPU usage, which I should have done, but to me XGL just makes sense, sending the job to the piece of hardware that's designed to handle it. The next couple of years will tell whether or not any of this stuff is really going to affect the user interface in more ways than just eye candy, but I see experimentation eventually weeding out the bad ideas and keeping the better ones.

I used to eschew this sort of thing as just worthless eyecandy, since I understand virtual desktops and such, but working with less knowledgeable people at work has seriously changed my tune. My sister is not an idiot, but she clicks on a virtual desktop, and thinks that she lost her windows. My efforts to explain it were done in vain, simply because she didn't like it from that first moment, and had basically already decided she had never used it, and didn't need it. The simple cube desktop switch makes this concept crystal clear for people. You see your windows, they're still there, they're just on the cube where you can't see them. Visual cues for windows minimizing help, and it would be nice to see dialog boxes come from some standard spot, or at least fade in gently, so they don't give people that "beepilespy" reaction (you know, when someone's beeper goes off and they have an awkward jerky movement because they weren't expecting it). So yeah, I'm excited about this, it seems to be the "correct" way to do things, at least as far as I can tell, since Linux usually makes good use of hardware in other areas, and it should eventually prove to be a big help to people like my sis, so they can learn to love virtual desktops and such.