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Metisse - New Looking Glass Alternative
Interested in a 3D desktop? zoso submitted news about about a project called Metisse, writing "There is working and freely available alternative to the (soon to be released under GPL) Sun Looking Glass 3D desktop ( Slashdot story here)
If you have spare CPU/GPU cycles just go download and compile the first publicly available version of this X Desktop. Everything looks nice (screenshots here), has OpenGL support, transparency and all other whistles...."
is how this is going to make me more productive. I can barely read the text when the windows are put into those weird angles.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
tell me why I would want to look at my document while it's twisted sideways?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If Linus had done enough research he would never have started Linux because FreeBSD did everything he wanted it to do.
Give the guy a break, at least people are trying to do something new. He took his own time to write the software, and give it away and all people here can do is bitch about it. If you don't like it, don't use it.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I really should use the preview button...
While 3D desktops "look cool" I still don't see how that makes them practical. I've found the ability to use multiple desktops much more useful. I make key shortcuts for all my desktops (CTRL+ALT+"desktop number" where "desktop number" is between 1 and 6) and I setup the useless windows key to press CTRL+ALT simultaneously so that I can switch between desktops with "windows key"+"desktop number". I find that to be much easier and more practical than organizing windows in three dimensions.
3D computing environments won't be quite useful until we get a 3d input. A mouse is meant to move around a 2d desktop, not a 3d environment.
We need a 3d input device, perhaps like the ones used in Minority report? That's how I see 3d displays becoming useful.
It's not supposed to make you more productive. The meaning of life, for some of us at least, is not to become more and more productive until we die. There is something about mankind, something inside of us, that wants to be entertained and amused, and this includes being in an asthetically pleasing environment (like a well decorated home, or in this case, a futuristic desktop that no one else on their block has).
I couldn't agree more.
The major problem with 3D desktops is that they're like trying to cram Beethoven's Fifth into a music box. I tried out the Sun 3D desktop once and got such a headache within five minutes that I was begging to go back to a command line.
Is anyone reminded of the whole way VRML on the web turned out to be such a massive dud? Why replicate the whole experience of browsing the aisles for a particular book when you can just type the name and find it a hundred times faster?
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
1. scaled windows - it's one thing to resize your windows and tile them. That's very old news. Scaled windows are another beast. Scale your firefox window everything shrinks, you don't get a bunch of "A..." "B..." tabs. Instead you get "Apples" "Boxes" etc.. in what amounts to a smaller font. Not always better or worse than resizing, but a nice new tool.
2. Skewed windows - Yeap, I can't read em' either. What is the point? It _may_ be easier to browse multiple windows and forefront the one you want using skewed/rotated effects (instead of an alt-tab ring or taskbar).
3. Window peeling - this is kinda nifty. Instead of minimizing, resizing or moving your current window to see what is underneath you 'peel back' part of the parent.
Earthshattering breakthrough in UI? Nope. A reliable and consistant cut-n-paste would be of more immediate value. But as an experiment into improving the GUI it is fun stuff.
I'm running kde 3.2.2 on a p4 1.8 ghz with 512 mb of ram and it's sluggish compared to windows xp. I don't think time should be spent trying to make cool looking 3d wm's but trying to improve xfree (alright, now xorg) or kde.
Excellent idea. When can you start?
"I'm bored"
I'm really not trying to flame or anything, but it always seems to me that while open source geeks have great technical skill, they completely lack any sense of art.
This window system is cool. It's cool in the same way that Aero Glass will be cool and how the Java3D desktop is cool. But what really turns me off about those screen shots is that horrible window manager. It's like whoever designed it has absolutely no sense of aesthetics.
Here's the thing... if you want a minimalist system, then fvwm2 is great. It's not a really attractive look, but it's small and fast. But if you're going to require a lot of horsepower so that you can rotate windows in 3-space and all the other cool stuff, then it's not asking much to want a window manager with some textures and lighting and curves and some other stuff that looks halfway attractive.
</rant>
I love it how ignorant people think that the same group of people are working on everything gui related, from browsers to video drivers.
Geezus man, this guy probably has NOTHING to do with KDE or the XFree86 project. If he wants to sit and watch pr0n all day or write a 3D window manager, it's his damn business.
It always amazes me how people can have such a gimmee mentality.
I guess this is pretty technically cool, but as a user of a desktop system (aren't we all?) I'm not actually sure of how this would benefit me. Would I, for example, be more efficient in my job using this?
Have you checked out the video demo of using Looking Glass? It looks pretty slick, and while it's hard to say whether in its present form it would make a better desktop, it certainly shows that a 3D desktop could potentially be in many ways better than the modern 2D desktops.
The current projects like Looking Glass and Metisse aren't meant for large-scale use immediately. They are experiments in what a 3D desktop could offer, and whether it could provide a better user experience. In the future typical desktop computers will have more and more CPU/GPU power to spare, so speding it on the user interface is only beneficial.
After seeing the Looking Glass demo above, I'd say that anybody claiming straight out that a 3D desktop is of no use whatsoever is pretty short-sighted. Who knows, maybe Looking Glass will become the next killer desktop? Maybe a 3D desktop is a bad idea and counter-productive? These projects are made specifically to find that out.
I doubt, therefore I may be.
ask yourself, "What problem does this solve?"
How about asking yourself the same question when it comes to the plethora of ways to prepare food?
The only problem that eating solves is nourishment, but yet people eat a variety of foods. Some foods taste better than others. Some people taste foods differently than other people, yet we only really need it for nourishment.
Any project started by a programmer or group of programmers is to fill some need, which may only be personal. Like food, we like variety and sometimes want something different or better or the combo of the two. If the creator (chef or programmer) like what they have done, they might want to share with the rest of the world.
The problem any software project sovles is self interest. It doesn't need to be anything more than that.
To belittle people for sharing is absurd.
----- Oooh, Shiny!
Isn't anyone who is trying to, asymptotically, reach peak productivness, really just calling for an end to slash dot? I mean... that'd increase productivity quite a lot.
This WM actually doesn't look too bad. Whenever I hear 3D desktop I assume garish arrangment of spinning browsers on cubes. This looks more akin to a *box with some neat ways of organising files on screen (the shrinking inactive files). Personally, I prefer my fluxbox tabbing, but I like the sensable 3D approach (not just some glitzy graphics demo).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Back in the early 80's, color CRT's started to become available. People's reaction was remarkably similar to current reaction to 3-D desktops. Some people thought is was pretty, and that was enough. Lots of people wondered what good it was, and whether expending more than one bit per pixel was really a good use of memory. Would X become bloated? Would bit-blit still work? Some programmers who liked black and white better because they found it easier to read.
as far as I'm concerned, what practical use does a 3D desktop environment give me? If anything, i'll get the windows so twisted that I won't be able to use them anymore.
first let me get a program that operates in complete 3D (like a 3D website that needs a browser that can display in 3D) then once windows appear as 3D boxes instead of planes, i'll use a 3D window manager.
Hrm, I don't quite agree. The weakness we get from having so many alternatives is bloat in the footprint of the program itself, and dilution of the resources for development and support of the project. I don't think alternatives are what keep *users* away from OpenSource, they are what keep OpenSource away from OpenSource, by factionalizing development/support efforts.
Every project should have a reason why they exist, and routinely compare themselves to the next closest things. When two projects get close enough to share some or all of their code, developers should put that high on the priority list. I know for a fact my PC doesn't have to be working as hard as it does to run a mix of applications -- and that performance hit is what I'd worry about users shrinking away from the most.
We need to get more excited about projects that encapsulate lower level functionality in a way that provides a flexible enough API for developers to offload their redundant code areas, but I see no reason to bash on new WMs -- most of these problems are in the realm of toolkits.
Someone had to do it.
How about compatibility with other wms like KDE and Gnome? Of course this thing is a nice piece of eye-candy but I'm sure there are many people set in their ways and comfortable with their familiar manager.
I would like to have some of these features, however I can't say I'm ready to just start using another wm cuz of some novelty.
Why not take some of the existing technology from this wm and incorporate it into other wms?
Just a thaught....
....move along....nothing to see here....
Violating UN resolutions are bad, right? What's the point of having resolutions if nobody will enforce them? Iraq was shooting at us, violated 14 counts, and we had the legal right to remove someone who killed his own people.
Shit, if violating UN resolutions is all it takes then we'd better get the tanks rolling into Israel sharpish, because they've violated a fucking metric shitload of UN resolutions. That's not even taking into account all the resolutions their buddy the United States of America vetoed. Or even questioning the sense of a nuclear weapons program in an area as unstable as the middle east.
You can't have it both ways.