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Looking Glass (GPL)

3Dwm (GPL)

Metisse (GPL)

"If I recall, there was an alternate windows manager called the Cube, that worked similar to this... what ever happenned to it?"

There's the 3D-CUBE project which includes 3Dwm (site appears to be down at the mo).

Personally, I agree with you - a 3d window manager won't work very well on a 2d screen. The is some real innovation in 2d window managers however, look at WindowLab and Ion.

Hrmm. So is 3Dwm's page. Is this the first sympathetic slashdotting?

remember 3dwm anyone? looks like its dead now. 3dwm website

See: 3Dwm

whatever happened to 3dwm??

Doesn't it look a bit like 3Dwm?

do a search for window managers on google, or try xwinman.org a site about window managers. I find that while gnome and KDE look much like what most people would expect, some other window managers put a new twist on how you interact with the computer.
also look at 3dwm.org a 3d window manager that's used at the 3D-CUBE

another good one is the Mozilla based desktop over at OEONE.com

while it seems obvious that the next step is going to be a fully 3d-enabled desktop

What, kinda like 3dwm?

3Dwm is the most promising to really alterate our human-computer interaction.

3DWM is more like it. It uses VNC to map windows to surfaces, and uses a 3d environment that you can model and populate. Not quite ready (I doubt it will ever be) for mainstream use, but nice to play with, and useful for research.

3Dwm
3D-Desktop

GGI Project, and 3dwm.

I get so sick and tired of hearing how Linux and OSS is always copying ideas.
Like shit.
Come on, if anything Linux has proven to be a breeding ground of research into what will be the future of computing.
Have you ever heard of 3dwm nothing like it exists anywhere else - and one day all computers will work that way.
Python ?
LTSP ?

Heck every other webserver in the world is a failed attempt to copy functionality from apache - which is for all matters of practicality an extention on the orriginal CERN webserver - the first ever webserver was OSS.
BIND ? An OSS invention is the only reason slashdot is not called 121.123.553.232 (and you probably missed the invalidness of said IP).

Bleeding moron.

Sorry to resort to flamage, it is not my normal style, but that kind of remark just pisses me off. I admit, I have been trolled.

just imagine how cool this would be!! 3dWM

It will take forever for the 3d holograms to load over a broadband cable connection. Also, the psychic popup ads will be a real pain....

There is no doubt that holographic televisions is in our near future. But, with holographic video and autosterescopic lenticular screens, I think that the next major step is going to be something like a VR-Grid Browser, which runs in the 3D Window Manager.

As far as the psychic popup ads... I don't know anything about that....

There are already lots of so called '3D OS'. Some samplers

Microsoft Task Gallery
3DTop
3Dwm
Win3D

Finally, we'll be able to use 3dwm in its full glory !

Regards, Tobias

until one comes up with something other than the generic windowed looking GUI (like a 3D GUI or something).

Make it compatible with 3DWM

I'm a linux sysadmin and I use a beowulf cluster of palm devices over a peddle powered 802.11b network running linux of course. The window manager I use is kde because it's so effiecient.

That LCD would probably rock with 3Dwm

3dwm is an interesting 3D window manager project (not an X11 window manager though)...definitely a bit different from the "same basic look and feel"

So in my experience, Linux has a very bright future for the desktop, at least for those people I encounter daily.

But I think the desktop is dead anyway. Rasterman says that embedded is the future - the level ground. This is true, but there is another path.

Do you think 10 years from now we are going to be using desktops too? I doubt it very much. Minority report perhaps gives us a snippet of the future. Computer "desktops" will go 3D. Maybe we will control our computer with virtual reality gloves and speak commands, or perhaps even use our mind for some simple tasks.

The future of computers will hopefully be power covered by simplicity. The way we think and use computers will change over time. We won't think "I need to use the computer to check e-mail". E-mail will become a daily part of life. Perhaps your house will say to you "You have 3 new messages". And then you respond "bring them up", and in front of you is projected an image of the e-mail, which could possibly be video rather than text. This kind of interface has no desktop. It is a simple and human way of interacting with computers. Desktops are cludgy things that expose people to some of the power of a comptuer that they don't need to see. What we need is a solution that has the simplest possible interface (like the e-mail scenario I gave) but has the potential for the user to hack it at it's base level (open source philosophy). That way the simplicity makes computers a powerful part of everyday life, but also gives the power to those who want/need to fiddle with the settings.

I think the desktop is dead. It's like having 4 remotes with 20 buttons each. In a house you hide your electricy cables, and you hide your water pipes. With computers however we expose people to desktops - which I believe are a patchwork solution. Eventually there will be no "computer" that people fight to use. There will be no monitor or keyboard. The interface will be more natural and human, integrated into the house or building.

Basically, desktops are getting close to their highest potential. The next phase will be something different, something that won't be solved by a new Windows release or by KDE 6.2 - it will require a shift in thought about how computers work, which will start off ugly at first and then progress into something beautiful looking. But as long as we have the desktop, our way of thinking will be constrained to 2 dimensions, which doesn't allow for the vast potential of computers in the near future.

(3dwm plug)

Three-Dimensional Workspace Manager, a Chalmers Medialab project, released as Free Software under the LGPL license and focusing on the development of a general-purpose platform for 3D user interfaces (3D GUIs). 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager and cannot work as such. It is a full 3D user environment, i.e. the 3D equivalent of X11 (far from completed, however).

Instead of confining your applications to the conventional 2D desktop, 3Dwm displays them in three dimensions and also provides the necessary for creating new applications with full 3D-UIs.

Designed especially for use in the Chalmers Medialab 3D-CUBE, 3Dwm will also run on most consumer-level desktop systems as well.

Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong. Apple has supprot for putting mixing openGl elements and "normal" elements, but does not treat everything as texteured 3d surfaces. Indeed in the consumer market Windows arrived at the partial solution first.

It will take so long because this is a pretty fundamental change to the GUI. Indeed it is stuff that on the X platform there is 3dwm which is significatn;y simpler than this and still has taken years of work, and is still not done yet.

You may hate MS , but don't hate blindly, MS has the best HCI lab in the world at present. And thier research lab (which has a (broken, but in google) link to story about this). MS may be dumb but the aren't stupid. I don't know if this is useful, but when they say this is new(outside a research lab), they are right.

Seriously, different project have different goals. kde whats to be the easiest to use for beginers. If you look at some of the posts from people about kde's usability, most have the theme "it works like this in windows, why is it different in kde". They are desiging for people who want this.

If you are looking for neat, new ideas try enlightenment, or 3dwm. Something for everyone...

well, Ion and 3dwm might come pretty close.

/Erik

Excepting games, virtual reality has faded away because there is no killer app for it. Back in the 80's and early 90's, the media, and most of the public, thought that computer interfaces should mimic reality as much as possible. Today, however, Joe Public realizes that VR would be less efficient than whatever interface he is using (even M$ is better than 3dwm, sadly). Right now, games are the primary manifestations of VR because they fulfill an usefull purpose. Until we find another use for VR (pr0n comes to mind), we will continue to see most VR only in games.

First of all, you might be interested to know that 3DWM is now available for Mandrake Linux (RPMs, here).

Second, some thoughts on how the iTunes fiasco can hurt Apple. Not only does this further embarass the company but also goes to say that their bug fixing department can't really be trusted too much. This was a rather large bug and suggests that not too much testing was done. If Apple becomes known for releasing buggy software that crashes your computer then they might dig themselves even deeper graves in the tech industry.

Onto the third subject, he says that you cannot transfer files from the HP Digital Entertainment center to your PC. Two things. One, the device has USB ports. Something tells me that people will find a way to hack it. Second, the part about not being able to use CD-RWs (you have to pay for special RIAA approved discs) is probably also hackable in some way shape or form. The RIAA will never win.

The concept looks nice but like alot of new geewiz "technology" the 3d cube looks like alot of overhead to do what my KDE desktops button already does just fine...

The guys at MIT have done an admirable job in merging several of these cutting-edge technologies into a seamless system. Their OS looks fascinating and I'd definitely like to take it out for a spin. But it's worth noting that most of what they offer is already available under Linux. As far as I'm concerned, they're re-inventing the wheel.

-CT

One interesting development, I just saw this come over Debian the other day, 3dwm-server among other packages.

Appears to be a complete replacement for X, along with a window manager that is 3d. It appears to be more of a testbed project than anything however,
Their page is here

Personally, I use IceWM at home, Windowmaker and Blackbox for my vnc sessions. :)

3dwm

Is that second screenshot taken using 3DWM?

Filler. Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted. Filler. Apple. Potato. Tomato.

Which brings up another, slightly OT point, What the Hell is the Lamness filter supposed to accomplish? I mean with the AC posting, what great harm does the Lameness Filter intend to save us from...?

The 3Dwm project does not aim to create the "be-all-end-all" 3D user interface. There is little sense in arbitrarily choosing from a number of Most people have a hard enough time keeping a 2D desktop organised that they'd hardly want things at arbitrary 3D angles!! Wouldn't a far better way to go be

Perhaps you're referring to the 3Dwm project? Of course, what you're talking about above has little relevance if that is the case. From the 3Dwm introduction: "The 3Dwm project does not aim to create the 'be-all-end-all' 3D user interface ... To the contrary, the mission is to build a solid research platform with the necessary primitives to support just about any kind of user interface."

The fine folks working on 3dwm are not claiming to have some great desktop. They are simply making the tools that will allow ambitious developers to write 3D interfaces. Not to mention the fact that they are squarely against the oddly angled 2D windows you are complaining about. Running current apps in a 3D environment is just a migration nicety. Apps that take full advantage of living in a 3D environment should (hopefully) provide read gains over 2D interfaces. Think Borders Books vs. one very very very long bookshelf.

-Erik

The 3Dwm project does not aim to create the "be-all-end-all" 3D user interface. There is little sense in arbitrarily choosing from a number of Most people have a hard enough time keeping a 2D desktop organised that they'd hardly want things at arbitrary 3D angles!! Wouldn't a far better way to go be

Perhaps you're referring to the 3Dwm project? Of course, what you're talking about above has little relevance if that is the case. From the 3Dwm introduction: "The 3Dwm project does not aim to create the 'be-all-end-all' 3D user interface ... To the contrary, the mission is to build a solid research platform with the necessary primitives to support just about any kind of user interface."

The fine folks working on 3dwm are not claiming to have some great desktop. They are simply making the tools that will allow ambitious developers to write 3D interfaces. Not to mention the fact that they are squarely against the oddly angled 2D windows you are complaining about. Running current apps in a 3D environment is just a migration nicety. Apps that take full advantage of living in a 3D environment should (hopefully) provide read gains over 2D interfaces. Think Borders Books vs. one very very very long bookshelf.

-Erik

Their is actually one ongoing attempt. Check out 3dwm.org. I've never tried it myself or know anybody who has tried it. It is an interestring project though.

I will give you one thing, if it looks and feels realistic, via. I'm not scrolling with a mouse, it most likely would become popular. The question is, how do you fool the brain into thinking this thing is real and not a computer simulation. The general rule is, if it frustrates people, they will give up and not use it.

I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.

First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.

Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.

As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.

There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.

Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)

This sucker is not a window manager. Not mainly.

This is the 3-D equivalent of X-Windows.

Like X-windows, it allows many programs to run using the same resource. Only, instead of that resource being a 2-D plane, it's a 3D volume.

Take a look at this screenshot. It looks to me like the desk and the screen are being generated by two separate programs, through 3dwm. And it's apparently network-transparent.

What's really new about this seems to be the display of several 3-d programs in the same space, not the notion of a three-dimensional desktop.

--Ben

Well.. those sorts of problems are user interface problems. I'd really like to see a true 3D user interface where you could put windows off to the left or right (maybe something like 3D|WM)and "turn" to look at them... These sorts of HMD's are the first step in getting the idea and the hardware into mainstream use..

Berlin's contribution to the user interface world is that it offers several enhancements to the user interface that makes your UI look cool and spiffy. Accompanied by 3DWM, you're on your way to creating a very good starting environment for developing visually stunning as well as utilitarian user interface. As most people seem to be screaming for performance, we'll have to wait and see how well theGGI team does for making use of advances in hardware and software.

Just like most technologies, you probably will have to wait a while to see the emergence of new applications that take advantage of 3D visualization. Think back to all the fantastic images of user interfaces in movies: The Lawnmower Man (1992), Disclosure (1994), and Wierd Science (1985)... (There are probably alot of better examples here, but what can I say... it's daylight out.)

Most likely we'll have our usual pioneers into the immersive environment, 3d games, pr0n and chat rooms. It will be interesting to find the other applications that will be introduced once this becomes more standardized and refined: statistical analysis, RDBMS/OODBMS visualization, network administration, etc. Truly intersting.

-Caracal

I gave this some more thought. One of the main reasons that we, at this point at least, don't need programs like 3dWM is simply because all of the CONTENT is 2d.

Any applications that you run are built around the paradigm of a 'window' and content inside a 2 dimensional box. While this idea works well for flat screens and flat OS's, this does not apply in any way to a OS(or wm) with that added dimension.

How useful is it to compile a kernel in a window that is floating at some odd off angle in the middle of virual space? Not very helpful at all. Now, imagine a program that is built with the Z in mind: my example is a file manager that has it's branches in all directions. I am POSITIVE that it is more intuitive to a user to think to himself, "I know I put the file over there, in the back to the right," over the tree system that we have now.

There are some things (most things, IMO) that work well in 2d specifically because we are used to writing in 2d. Other things (organization and such) are more suited to oriented positions and such.

Rami James
GUI Developer
ALST R&D, IL
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