Novell Linux Desktop Demonstration Videos

That's a good point. Ideally, I'd like to see a spec published that allows an arbitrary window manager to implement extensions that take advantage of xgl. Ie, I should be able to implement a window manager tomorrow that does ripply windows instead of wobbly windows, or performs a different effect (or no effect at all) upon minimization. An underlying xgl with well documented interfaces is ideal from a software point of view.

Of course, this is all said without knowing the internal architecture of xgl. Maybe it's not possible in its current implementation. However, from a design perspective this is the ideal way to do things.

It's good that they've made compiz extensible, however that doesn't help people who don't like compiz, or can't run it for whatever reason. Right now, if I understand this correctly, you need compiz to take advantage of xgl. There are no APIs that others can use when writing their own window managers. If this is the case, this is a bad design decision. Software should be modular, with clearly defined components that talk to one another. Xgl and the window manager are different technologies (supported by the fact that there have been window managers long before there was Xgl). They should be separated into different modules so that either the WM or Xgl can be swapped out for a different implementation when required.

An anonymous poster posted this in another thread:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2421/nld15xt.png

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/9240/nld26qe.png

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1690/nld33ho.png

I agree it looks really slick.

To those in the know: I take it that the "Search" field is a beagle search?

It does look really slick. My bet is this is a NLD only enhancement and won't end up in OpenSUSE.

What if the binary drivers had been used? XGL works on pretty much any card with a working OpenGL implementation, even if you're using open-source drivers.

And I don't think there's anything useful about wobbly windows, but it's cool. Just don't start complaining about it, you're not forced to use it nor Novell Linux Desktop 10.
-WareKala

Replying to myself:
Apparently it will work with other drivers too than just the closed-source drivers, but at the moment it probably won't. Besides, the older machines where Xgl would really be useful are out of luck: video performance will be piss poor if your gfx card doesn't support pixel shaders. So, my laptop is completely out of luck =(
-WareKala

What more can one say? I wish my distro looked that cool =P
-WareKala

The actual idea behind the whole XGL server implementation is to draw everything possible using OpenGL, so every 2D operation in X is now hardware accelerated and fast, and you don't need a high-end graphics card either. Pretty much anything with a few megabytes of memory and OpenGL support is enough to run XGL. Oh, and I'm sure there's an option to turn those cool'n'silly animations off =) The "wobbly windows" feature isn't very useful, but I think it's neat. But f.ex. transparent windows are also useful, and eye-candy can be used to alert the user to new events.
-WareKala

This is exactly my point. Shame I'm not skilled enough with english.

What I mean is even the guys who find all this eyecandy a waste will benefit from a 3D accelerated 2D desktop.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-January/011922.html

Im sure compiz is whats doing the cool effects. Its currently still not ready for the public and hes expecting to release it for xdevconf this month.

Hi

In fact, I think that all those realtime effects are just very good visual clue that can yelp new user to understand whats going on and make them reach a high level of productivity faster than before with their desktop environnement

David