Impress Your Friends With A 3D Desktop Pager

That's OK... by FooAtWFU · 2004-09-25 11:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'll take the [1][2][3][4] of the default GNOME desktop pager, it's quite all right. I can even drag windows between desktops with it. Shiny screenshots, though.

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The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.

Re:That's OK... by Beatbyte · 2004-09-25 11:34 · Score: 1

yours maybe functional... but I can hack the gibson with 3D-Desktop!

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Get paid to code OSS
Re:That's OK... by shufler · 2004-09-25 11:42 · Score: 1

Not with anything faster than a 28.8!
Re:That's OK... by kwr2k · 2004-09-26 12:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

I've noticed that whenever any interesting GUI addition to KDE is mentioned, GNOME zealots get in the way and start deriding it by emphasizing how GNOME is simpler ... and yet, GNOME claims to be more GUIier than KDE ... I guess once GNOME has its own 3d pager, they will say it is being done in the most HIG way and its the most innovative and all that crap. Seems like GNOME has copied the entire book over from Microsoft on how to claim everything they copy as the "First and the Best"!!

well... by nuggetman · 2004-09-25 11:12 · Score: 1, Funny

i liked it better the first time, when it was called "apple fast user switching"!

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...and that's all there is to it.

Re:well... by jeif1k · 2004-09-25 14:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Except that that wasn't the first time. This kind of visualization comes from Xerox PARC and is called "perspective wall". The idea is that the tilted views off to the side give you some context without taking up too much space.

Looks like Apple is still getting their ideas from Xerox PARC, even 20 years after the "original" Macintosh.
Re:well... by nuggetman · 2004-09-26 03:43 · Score: 1

that's the last time i use an obscure snl skit for a joke

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...and that's all there is to it.

I liked it better . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-25 11:18 · Score: 2, Informative

I liked it better when it was called "Looking Glass" and was/is still in development by Sun Microsystems as demonstrated to an awed crowd by Jonathan Schwartz and was/is planned to be released as open source to the community when Sun has completed it.

Re:I liked it better . . . by hamsandwich72 · 2004-09-27 07:04 · Score: 1

No, it's not Looking Glass. LG is one single desktop running your apps in 3D. This is just a flashy way to change desktops.

Requirements + more by viniosity · 2004-09-25 11:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

This looks very cool - I wonder what the system requirements are besides accelerated video? Anybody using this yet that would like to chime in on it?

As much as some people like to bad-mouth eye-candy, it's one of the reasons I've been able to swtich so many people from Windows. First you 'Wow' them with the eye-candy and then you tell them about the stability and lack of viruses.. 9/10 times the next question is 'why don't more people use it.' Eventually they feel like they know a secret and buy a mac. Likewise, this would be a nice 'wow' for people looking to introduce the layman to gnu/linux.

Re:Requirements + more by molnarcs · 2004-09-25 11:58 · Score: 4, Funny

This is quite an old program (I used it in Mandrake 9.0!). Worked fine for some time, than it became buggy - either the prog or Nvidia drivers. Oh yes, I had a TNT2 card, and it worked fine with it. Tried it once on FreeBSD since then, but had many crashed (that was before the recent nvidia driver update, and I have an FX5200 now).
This is an funny but accurate description of the port:
bash-3.00$ portell 3ddesktop /usr/ports/x11/3ddesktop/pkg-descr reads: 3D-Desktop is an OpenGL program that lets you switch virtual desktops in a seamless 3-Dimensional environment. Impress your friends, and slow down your desktop... all at the same time! WWW: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net -Adam Weinberger <adamw@FreeBSD.org>
Re:Requirements + more by molnarcs · 2004-09-25 12:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

I have to add: you are absolutely correct about the advertisement value. I was (still am, but I have too little time to attend it) a member of a p2p forum. There was a "post a screenshot of your desktop" thread and I choose to show it in full 3D (looked best when I configured 3 desktops). I gimped an image that showed switching desktops - it had 3 rows and 2 images in each, showing each step, from zooming out from a current desktop to finally zooming in to another displaying the website of the forum in a browser.
Everyone was impressed, and wanted immediately the prog. I provided them with the link, but had some explaining to do afterwards (no, you won't be able to install it on XP) - including some positive things I had to say about Linux.
Sorry for the typos above. I should go to sleep now.

old old news by huber · 2004-09-25 11:31 · Score: 1

this has been around for years. long before OS 10.3

*yawn* by rhettoric · 2004-09-25 11:36 · Score: 2, Informative

Yeah, I saw the screenshots. I also saw Sun's "spectacular" demonstration of similar technology.

I'm just not that impressed. Is anyone's productivity really suffering because of the horific amounts of time it takes to rotate through your desktops?

Launching and navigating the viewer would take you as long as shortcutting to all the desktops you're using. Yes yes, I realize I'm backing a linear technique to handle a potentially exponential problem (what if you have 82 desktops open? what then?), but in my personal experience, even when I have heaps of available desktops at my disposal I find myself utilizing only two or possibly three if things are really busy.

Instead of "improving my productivity" I wish these developers would focus their skills on what linux desperately needs -- more games!

Re:*yawn* by wertarbyte · 2004-09-25 21:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Instead of "improving my productivity" I wish these developers would focus their skills on what linux desperately needs -- more games!

If you have a wheel mouse, you can play the desktop lottery with this :-) Just spiiiiiin the wheeeeeel....

--
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Re:*yawn* by Jacius · 2004-09-26 04:33 · Score: 1

First: I'm sure the idea behind 3D Desktop is not 'increasing your productivity.' The idea is to have more eye candy! Yummy!

Second: Just because a developer can make a 3D pager doesn't mean they would necessarily be useful for making a game. The required skills are very different, especially seeing as there are probably more 'proof of concept' 3D game engines for Linux than there are 3D games. Linux has quite a lot of programmers already, the real lack is people with experience in graphic and audio design, writing, creating fun game scenarios, etc.

There is still demand for programmers, to create better tools and libraries for game designers to use, but the limiting factor is game _content_, which programmers have historically been.. err, not the best at creating ;)
Re:*yawn* by 0racle · 2004-09-26 06:18 · Score: 1

I know, I hate it when people enjoy using their computer too and make whatever they want, they should ask me before doing something silly.

Is it so hard for you to say, 'Wow, that looks cool.' instead of finding every stupid argument you can make against the guy. This was just for fun project some guy did, and probably had a few people ask for it so he released it. Even though I wouldn't use it, I can say that it looks like a good job. If everyone had nothing good to say about every project that comes out, well everyone who already doesn't since I don't see too many compliments here, what would be the reason to release any OSS project? Is it so hard to give a compliment on some hard work well done?

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:*yawn* by rhettoric · 2004-09-26 08:03 · Score: 1

I totally agree with you on this one. A small change to a FPS (look look, I can weild two guns at the same time!), is not nearly as engaging to me as an engaging story.

Cheers to game content!
Re:*yawn* by rhettoric · 2004-09-26 08:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's not that I am against experimentation or even eye candy. In fact some of my favorite projects aren't exactly the most productive things in the world (K++ is a good example). However, these projects don't make a pretense of productivity.

What I'm criticizing isn't the fact that someone implemented a "cool looking" idea, but that so many users are touting it as an incredible aid to productivity, an thus a reason to convert to linux.

I see you're point, though. Having people say "oooh, that's awesome!" is an excellent marketing strategy. But I'd rather not have the feature-bloat in the OS.

oldness.. by omega9 · 2004-09-25 12:10 · Score: 1

From the 3D Desktop project page at SourceForge:

Project UNIX name: desk3d Registered: 2002-08-08 08:57

This thing is greater than 2 years old.

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I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

Re:oldness.. by madaxe42 · 2004-09-25 12:18 · Score: 1

I remember playing with something not dissimilar as a litestep pluging *many* years ago - it shrunk the desktop to a cube, and you could rotate to the new desktop.

The cat was dead, and the poster was torn...

Impress my friends? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-25 12:12 · Score: 0

I know this is /. and all ... but I don't think I'd want to keep friends that were impressed by my virtual desktop manager ... unless I wrote it myself.

It's a UNIX system! by T-Ranger · 2004-09-25 12:25 · Score: 3, Funny

I know this!

Re:It's a UNIX system! by GridPoint · 2004-09-26 00:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Of course, we geeks know why the parent post is so funny: it wasn't a UNIX system in Jurassic Park, it was an IRIX system! (Running the fsn 3d filesystem naviagator.)
Re:It's a UNIX system! by T-Ranger · 2004-09-26 03:48 · Score: 1

IRIX is a Unix system, dumbass. Perhaps a paticularaly batardized one - Ive never used it - but no more then the dozens of bastartized Unix systems from the 80's.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by GridPoint · 2004-09-26 05:40 · Score: 1

IRIX didn't become a UNIX system until 1995 (with IRIX 5.3) and Jurassic park was released in 1993. So, no, it wasn't a UNIX system, it was an IRIX system.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by T-Ranger · 2004-09-26 08:03 · Score: 1

According to http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html , IRIX was a deritive of MIPS OS, itself a deritive of BSD. Perhaps it was not certified as UNIX until 1995, but UNIX certification is a relativly new thing. Beh. Even if technically, "Its a UNIX system" is incorrect, the important part: THEREFOR "...I know this", is correct. That is, the leap from "I know 1994 UNIX" to "I know the 1993 version of IRIX" is valid (though she might not have known UNIX).
Re:It's a UNIX system! by wertarbyte · 2004-09-26 10:11 · Score: 1

You should check out Xcruiser (formerly Xruise). Pretty nice, especially if you use stow and unter /usr/local.

--
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by GridPoint · 2004-09-26 10:34 · Score: 1

Even if technically, "Its a UNIX system" is incorrect [...]

Exactly! And that's the hillarious part of the joke. A lot of people think that what she is running is not UNIX because it does not look like the UNIX they are used to (command line interface). But we geeks know that what she is running is not UNIX because IRIX was not UNIX certified until two or three years later. And that's what makes the joke so funny.

Furthermore, the fact that IRIX was BSD-derived, and not SysV-derived makes it even more funny, because we all know of the battle between the Berkeley folks and the AT&T/UNIX people.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by T-Ranger · 2004-09-26 12:11 · Score: 1

And all this time I thought I was the biggest geek in the world. I capitulate that title.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-27 05:58 · Score: 1, Funny

g#$*#$d slashdot geeks. Get a room.
Re:It's a UNIX system! by Kehvarl · 2004-09-27 08:36 · Score: 1

Are you kidding? If they get a room we'd have to stop watching.

for those using windows XP: by Sean+Johnson · 2004-09-25 12:33 · Score: 2, Informative

A similar program available is called SphereXP or some such thing. It works pretty well. It's not perfect of course. It still has some improvements to be done, but it is free AFAIK. It is kind of like the reverse of what this article is talking about. YOu are actually inside of a sphere and you can paste the windows and things to encircle you so to speak. I don't use it regularly because the minor flaws don't allow me access to say the task bar. The task manager doesn't work with it either. You can zoom in and out and have windows postioned further away and such. Like I said it really is pretty slick. I just am so used to a flat 2D desktop that it feels wierd to me. I guess if I used it more I would start thinking the 2D was inefficient and sucked.

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>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.

Re:for those using windows XP: by lachlan76 · 2004-09-25 22:08 · Score: 2, Informative
Here is a link.

The only things I don't like about it are:
- No taskbar
- Winamp comes out as many windows, which I have to move
- Always-on-top windows are placed on the 3d area, even though they are still visible
- Background windows are not updated at all, so I can't see the current status.
- .NET Framework. Try downloading that on a 33k modem
Apart from these, I am quite happy with it. Very useful when I need to have >10/15 windows open.

Re:Creativity Impaired by darthtrevino · 2004-09-25 13:36 · Score: 1

That's why we need to enforce gratuitous software patents across the board! Keep those damn open source people from copying the look-and-feel of obscure closed source software!

Seriously, what commercial product does something like that?

Nifty for a few minutes... by Spoing · 2004-09-25 14:15 · Score: 1

This is really a page flip program with a 3D effect. While the desktops are updated, the updates aren't dynamic; don't expect to run programs in different windows and see the current status in one of the windows. You will see a slightly dated view on the other desktops.

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Re:Nifty for a few minutes... by Joseph+Vigneau · 2004-09-27 09:56 · Score: 1

While the desktops are updated, the updates aren't dynamic

This wouldn't be a problem if it can be modified to use the freedesktop.org X Composite Extension and X Damage Extension.

Re:Creativity Impaired by jeif1k · 2004-09-25 14:52 · Score: 1

It basically has been patented (US 5,339,390). And it's being used in Apple's user switching. And no matter who uses it, it still is no more than a frill.

[old], and slow by Cokelee · 2004-09-25 17:42 · Score: 1

[old] and i've since ditched it, gdesklets and gnome for a much lighter experience with Enlightenment as my window manager. In an app like this "feel" is everything, and it always feels a little slow :(.

impressive by DrSkwid · 2004-09-25 17:48 · Score: 1

for lower values of friend

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There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter

Nice once and then you ditch it unless you like XP by SmallFurryCreature · 2004-09-25 19:04 · Score: 4, Informative

This kinda thing is like the Windows XP skin. Removed in a few seconds by anyone who knows what they are doing. Why? Because it wastes time and desktop space. Those extra thick borders take up way more space and those scrolling menus take time to deploy wich if you are using your computer anywhere near serious is just a waste.

Same with this 3D pager crap. So now I got to sit and watch a 2-3 second animation each time I switch? Yippie!

Seriously who of the linux users really has the time for this? I am all for eye candy but not at the cost of either my working speed or taking up valuable desktop space.

I kinda like the way Enlightenment does it where you can drag a desktop over another and see them both at once partially although I have now switched the XFCE4 for its speed.

There may be a use for 3D on the desktop but so far nobody seems to have found it. About the only thing I can imagine is to go to 3D since you can then use the graphics cards power and offload the poor cpu.

The problem with most new gadgets including suns attempt is that they dare not break the current desktop design (because that would break all current application) and truly design a new interface.

--

MMO Quests are like orgasms:

You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

Re:Creativity Impaired by 0x0d0a · 2004-09-25 20:50 · Score: 1

Uh, huh. You mean a good idea that OSS took from closed source that took it from open source? XFree86 had a "3d cube hack" *way* back in the day.

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May we never see th

Preformance by El+Icaro · 2004-09-26 02:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

How much proformance does this suck out of the graphic card? What about those of us who can't configure 3D acceleration because ati can't release decent drivers? I think this need some time until there are drivers/modules/whataver that make life on linux simpler. Linux IS ready for the desktop.. it is just not ready for the avg. user.

I am waiting ... by kwr2k · 2004-09-26 12:43 · Score: 1

for a GNOME version to be out before all the trolls here start saying ... umm now that improves my productivity. For instance, GNOME's HIG will show a popup window saying "Now you are being transferred to desktop [n]. To stop this action please press Cancel now, its the button on the wrong side of what you're used to!"

Xinerama by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-27 09:24 · Score: 0

I made the mistake of installing this and Xinerama on two monitors at right angles. That made my desktop 4-dimensional. The whole thing formed a black hole, sucked my home office in and imploded. Allstate won't accept my claim form, either.

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Impress Your Friends With A 3D Desktop Pager

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