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Fedora's OpenGL Composite Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "First we had Novell's XGL and Compiz technology, which allows for OpenGL-based composite rendering on the Linux desktop. Now Fedora has created the Advanced Indirect GL X project, which aims for similar desktop effects but with a simpler implementation. Sure, at the end of the day it's just eye candy, but make no mistake - the Linux desktop is due for a massive shake-up!"
I spend upwards of 10 hours a day staring at a computer screen; what I'm looking at had better be aesthetically pleasing.
It *does* serve a purpose - it makes my day that little bit more enjoyable. Decorating your house serves no real purpose (unless you're trying to sell it), but most people want something a little nicer than bare walls. People decorate their cubicles and offices - a photo here, a plant there.
I don't see why a desktop should be any different.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
How does this relate to the ongoing accelerated X11 efforts?
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Having increased OpenGL support for Linux and gathering development support for advanced graphics toolkits will be a big win for Linux desktop. Having a sexy and slick interface has helped make OSX very popular. Sexy graphics for Linux will open new possibilities for interfaces, data display, games, and more.
Let us pay homage to Silicon Graphics, the originators of OpenGL. They may not live out the year.
allowing any user to load and install any application or hardware accessory
Isn't that part of the reason Windows is so insecure? Any user can install an application (when using default setup, as most people use), so the exploits can do more than screw with the user's home directory.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Did you even RTFA? All the work was done upstream. Nothing's there that's Fedora specific.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
How is this an incompatible fork? According to the website, they're working with upstream X development to make this a part of or at least easily added to the regular X distribution. It's just that only FC5 has things setup just right so far.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Your nVidia video card doesn't support Aigl, you mean. It's missing an extension that nVidia is adding in the next driver release. This is hardly a show-stopper. Indeed, from the article, nVidia seems to believe this is the way to go.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
"XGL is a different X server. This is a more incremental change which is slated to become part of Xorg. We don't believe that replacing the entire X server is the right path, and that improving it incrementally is a better way to modernize it. After talking to people at xdevconf, it felt like much of the upstream Xorg community shares this view. You can search Adam Jackson's notes for "large work for Xgl" to get the blow-by-blow or NVidia's presentation from XDevConf 2006 on using the existing model.
We've been working on the AIGLX code for a some time with the community, which is in direct contrast with the way that XGL was developed. XGL spent the last few months of its development behind closed doors and was dropped on the community as a finished solution. Unfortunately, it wasn't peer reviewed during its development process, and its architecture doesn't sit well with a lot of people.
The other question is Wait, can I use compiz? The answer there is a theoretical yes, although no one has actually gotten it to work. We love compiz and we think it's great stuff and is well polished, but it's often confused with the underlying architecture of XGL. Much like the code that we've added to metacity, compiz is a composite manager. With a bit of work, it should be possible to get compiz working on this X server. There's an excellent post from Soren on the topic of compiz vs. metacity."
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
My, that was a yummy potato!
You are right, we should forbid X developers from working on X until your issues are solved.
What we should do is grab the X developers ( which some are volunteers, which are giving this away for free ) and force them to work on a Microsoft Active Directory clone. Given the extensive experience X developers have in directory service, forcing them to work on it is a no brainer.
What should happen is that all development on linux should stall until we get your issues solved. People with no interest whatsoever in Active Directory should be forced to work on it. This of course should include Gnome, KDE, and all of GNU products.
Also, Microsoft Active Directory is TOP priority, nobody in their house can do anything usefull without it. And it is well known that 87% of the desktop computers are using Active Directory.
so I agree, STOP WORKING ON X, YOU ARE KILLING LINUX
XFree86/X.Org Loadable Driver Framework to Achieve a Composited X Desktop":
Vista's eye candy has tremendous system requirements. On X, if you can offload window operations to an OpenGL compositor, you save a significant number of CPU cycles.
Yes, there is a difference. Take a look at your system. Turn off NVIDIA's custom render accel, and watch X's CPU usage while moving windows around, or resizing, or scrolling.
Install XGL, or this new Fedora thing.
Play a video on X, run a background compilation process, and then resize your video window. It'll stutter like mad. Try the same thing on XGL; its fluid. Watch all the fluid animations, and watch what happens to your CPU usage. With any accelerated video card (even ancient POS like Intel's i810, or Radeon 7500+, or older low-end Geforce) you'll see negligble CPU impact.
Contrast that with Vista's requirements for the full "Aeroglass" experience. You can do the same thing on XGL at a far, far lower cost of system resources.
One approach makes your computer faster. The other requires a faster computer. Understand?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/
# Uninstall any previous version of these filters.(This is important!) Go to add remove programs, remove oggcodecs
# Make sure media player or any directshow applications are closed.
# Run the installer.
Then Windows Media Player or any other directshow application (eg. BSPlayer) will be able to play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, Ogg Theora, Ogg FLAC and native FLAC."
You're welcome.
Not every argument requires reduction to absurdity.
XGL isn't a rewrite of the server. It's a rewrite of the DDX (device-dependent) portion. That's probably the best part of the server to rewrite though, given the DIX (device-independent) is relatively clean code. XGL doesn't get rid of X's cruftiest part, though, which is xlib. XCB is ready to be a replacement, but GNOME won't be able to move to it until 3.x, because Xlib is implicitly a part of the GDK ABI.
That said, I wouldn't say XGL is better than OS X yet. OS X can do the effects you listed, it just doesn't do a lot of them for asthetic reasons. Technically, I'd argue OS X's approach is superior to XGL's, since Quartz 2D Extreme uses a direct-rendering model as opposed to XGL's indirect model. Additionally, the fact that the compositor is seperate from the window server in XGL makes synchronization a much bigger PITA than in OS X. On the other hand, the indirect model allows the X server to access the geometry stream, which allows some effects the direct-rendering model doesn't. Technical merits aside, OS X still wins because its already a stable, mature, and widely used technology. It'll be awhile before XGL is as mature as Quartz (especially at the driver layer --- DRI is really not ready for XGL yet), and before GNOME/KDE apps use vector graphics as widely as OS X apps do.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...