Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D

gruenz writes "Linux Planet writes in this article about a project inside Sun developing "an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers." A demo is available from Sun. 'In the demonstration, Jonathan Schwartz, vice president of Sun's software group, increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it, turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf, turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back, and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.'" It's called Looking Glass, in case you've heard that name before.

Comments

Eye candy is nice :-)

[Space cowboy]

If you look at the XDirectFB screenshots you can see what it looks like using the DirectFB X-server :-) The server has the ability to make windows transparent/opaque by degree as focus is lost/gained or hidden/shown. Very nice :-)

If this gets the go-ahead (and if it's open source), it'll be even nicer. The DirectFB X-server is still a standard 2-D environment, with all that entails. I can't see much use for attaching sticky notes to the "backs" of windows, but I'm sure someone will come up with one :-)

Simon

Sounds interesting

[plazman30]

This would be very nice to see. But I wonder if this is something that may leave the average home user confused.

I believe the ultimate goal of Linux desktops should be to make the computer as easy to use as a Mac.

Andy

Re:Sounds interesting

[anonicon]

The ultimate goal of Linux desktops should be the ability to set it up to work exactly the way you want it to, not to imitate the Mac.

I don't give a shit about the average home user.

Call me silly, but you just contradicted yourself. If the average home user wants to it to imitate a Mac or W2K or Fisher-Price Speak and Spell, I agree that Linux shoud let them.

I don't think the goal of Linux desktops should be to take away all the things I like about them.

Problem is, ask 1,000 people what they like about the Linux desktop and you'll get little agreement. Besides, an experienced hacker will have a lot fewer problems re-configuring their desktop from a basic setup than the average user will trying to configure their desktop from a hacker setup.

the average home user can use a stripped-down KDE set to emulate Windows or Mac if he/she wants to.

This is a really good idea. I'd *love* to see a vanilla Linux standard that all programmers could program to without worrying about which of 97 flavors of Linux were installed on the PC. The CLI Commandos and UberL33ts could keep their CLIs and RTFM MAN pages while the general public benefited from having an inexpensive, realistic escape path from MS.

Video Drivers?

[WARM3CH]

3D graphics on the accelerated cards without video drivers? Anyone? I mean, at least for the most interesting news would be to hear about opensource, fully functional video drivers for major cards. By itselt, 3D desktops are not original ideas, lots of people have good ideas about them but only if Sun or anyone else could push nVidia or ATI to provide what we really need (and miss) in Linux, then I'd be impressed.

This is really old news, but it's still cool

[haggar]

I saw a demo of Looking Glass. It rocked. And yes, I do see potential uses for this technology, not least for some serious storage management. Or complex document management. Or large EDA tool integration. The possibilities are fascinating, and don't tell me you "don't see them".

But, this demo was so long ago, by now I thought every nerd on earth knew about it. I am surprised Slashdot psoted it as news.

Re:Sun: Last people to design a UI

[Gr8Apes]

Linux does not need some fancy graphics on the desktop to make an impact.

I would disagree. Fancy graphics, eye candy, etc, appeals to the masses. The masses spend massive amounts of money on additional software. Massive amounts of money tends to attract the kind of attention Linux needs to make a lasting impact. (Note: it's already made a real impact:)

So, even if this is utter crap for you and me and we might never use it, having it as an option would be good for Linux. After all, look at the functionally crappy but pretty Windows UI, and how many people "like" it. Then listen to new Mac panther users. They LOVE their new OS - "everything's so easy" is what I hear from the converted. Matter of fact, I'd say that OSX has done more to promote Unix to the common person's desktop than anyone.

Re:Cool, but applicability?

[DrWhizBang]

Although this may not be what linux needs right now, it certainly will be.

All of the desktop stuff that you refer to is being worked on. I currently have a linux desktop at home, and my wife and kids use it with no problem. The linux desktop will soon be as good as the Windows or Mac desktop. ... then what do we do?

Someone has to be working on The Next Big Thing (TM). Maybe it's not this, but we won't know unless someone works on proof of concept designs.

Microsoft has said repeatedly that they believe that open source is not capable of innovation - only cloning. Well, that is certainly inaccurate, given apache, X, and the whole bloody internet. But it does set a bar higher, to make sure that linux can be more advanced than Windows, and to do that requires experimentation, and if a company like Sun is will ing to pay people to work on that, then so be it - even if their stuff is not open source, at least it is not Microsoft.

Re:Nothing to do with Java

[OmniVector]

I actually talked with some of the Sun reps at LinuxWorld this year, and they said the reason the named it Java DS is because they did a market survey, and more people had heard of Java than Sun. Pretty sad huh?

What i find remarkable is that in light of the fact that the desktop system has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with java, and the fact that the people in their customer base who would actually hear of such a product and really care all think naming a desktop system after a language is completely retarded, they go and name it Java DS anyways. They need to rethink their market.

It Can't Be Just Eye Candy

[Jeff Archambeault]

Sure, the eye candy helps, but it can't be just about that.

It has to be more than a windows manager or a file manager, it must also do programming. Imagine 'frames/windows/whatevers' with sides, as well as backs. Want the translation of a foreign website? Just put that on a different side, as well as the stickynotes 'side', and sides for covering "pipes" and environment variables. Every object has it's own 'control panel' site, where the # of sides are defined. It's probably where 'relative faces' would be defined, where an axis of a web browser's object can be defined to return each search result on a 'face' of the given axis. No need to resort to cubism when free-form objects can be defined.

Select a group of objects, and rotate the selected group to see their "pipes". "Pass-thru" programs that don't need any visual rendering space could just show up as a line, if viewed from one side, but have another side akin to a shell script. Directional flow lines between objects used for STDIO only show up in programming view.

Any 'frame/window/view' should be able to become the 'primary/foreground', and each view can contain any number of other objects or views, allowing for far more than "3d". With enough memory, you could store the whole stack as it changed through time.

Well, that's what such a beast would mean to me. It's more about walking through my filespace in a graphical MU*-like environment, it's more like picking up a strange shiney object in a room of such an environment...think of that Escher print of him drawing his reflection in the mirror/glass/metal(?)sphere...but if zoomed in on, will reveal that you're looking at is a view of the opposite of what you were looking at - MU* environment in a 'window' surrounded by desktop.

I'll put the pipe down now ;)

(These ideas are copyleft by the implementor)