Awesome XGL
If you haven't yet discovered the future of desktop graphics then you
need to look at Linux.
Last night I activated XGL on my SuSE 10.1 system. The process only took a few minutes but the results are stunning. Screenshots only give you a flavour of this awesome 3D environment, you really need to experience it for yourself. (Technical notes below.)
[Click on the images for a
hi-res view.]
XGL puts your virtual desktop onto four sides of a cube. You can rotate the cube by holding down Ctrl+Alt and dragging anywhere on screen or hitting the left or right arrow keys.
Dragging windows off to the left or right wraps them round the corners of the cube. Looks even more impressive if you're playing a DVD at the time!
Holding Ctrl+Alt plus the down arrow flattens the cube to give you a tiled view of all your desktops. Left and right arrow keys to scroll.
Imagine your windows are on sheets of rubber. They bend, they flex, they bounce and spring back into shape. You haven't seen anything till you've seen wobbly windows. Dragging, moving, maximising and minimising has never been so much fun!
Hold down the Alt key and move the mouse wheel up and down to adjust a window's transparency.
A combination of the Window key and scroll wheel zooms in and out.
Alt+Tab activates the task switcher showing smaller versions of the actual applications while fading up each window in turn.
And how's this for a fun but totally useless effect? Shift+F9 toggles a rain storm on your desktop. Or Ctrl+Windows will direct the droplets to your moving cursor.
Technical Notes
XGL is still in early release but I found the SuSE version that comes with release 10.1 pretty stable on my NVidia FX-5200. You'll find installation and activation instructions at
http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Xgl_on_SUSE_Linux
XGL is also available for Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and Gentoo. Check the distros websites for full instructions.
Last night I activated XGL on my SuSE 10.1 system. The process only took a few minutes but the results are stunning. Screenshots only give you a flavour of this awesome 3D environment, you really need to experience it for yourself. (Technical notes below.)
[Click on the images for a
hi-res view.]XGL puts your virtual desktop onto four sides of a cube. You can rotate the cube by holding down Ctrl+Alt and dragging anywhere on screen or hitting the left or right arrow keys.
Dragging windows off to the left or right wraps them round the corners of the cube. Looks even more impressive if you're playing a DVD at the time!
Holding Ctrl+Alt plus the down arrow flattens the cube to give you a tiled view of all your desktops. Left and right arrow keys to scroll.
Imagine your windows are on sheets of rubber. They bend, they flex, they bounce and spring back into shape. You haven't seen anything till you've seen wobbly windows. Dragging, moving, maximising and minimising has never been so much fun!
Hold down the Alt key and move the mouse wheel up and down to adjust a window's transparency.
A combination of the Window key and scroll wheel zooms in and out.
Alt+Tab activates the task switcher showing smaller versions of the actual applications while fading up each window in turn.
And how's this for a fun but totally useless effect? Shift+F9 toggles a rain storm on your desktop. Or Ctrl+Windows will direct the droplets to your moving cursor.
Technical Notes
XGL is still in early release but I found the SuSE version that comes with release 10.1 pretty stable on my NVidia FX-5200. You'll find installation and activation instructions at
http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Xgl_on_SUSE_Linux
XGL is also available for Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and Gentoo. Check the distros websites for full instructions.
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Comments
This is very cool... and I bet it only uses a fraction of the power you need to achieve this kind of thing under vista.
As someone commented 'is this useful?' I have to say, well, not exactly, but it's a framework upon which to BUILD usability and surely that's the point. OS X style 3D-ness under Linux... nice :)
I notice that the 'new' spaces feature in OS X 10.5 looks like it's an almost direct take on Linux 'desktops' albeit presented in a slightly different format.
Loving Linux as my PC OS alongside OS X on my Macs - it's much easier/smoother to chop n change between the two than it is between OSX and that hateful Windoze.
Posted by: Vim Vendors | September 15, 2007 4:13 AM
You can see video clips on the Novell site too, if you don't want to use that horrid YouTube site.
http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/
The desktop effects are very neat & don't require a great deal of horsepower, and some are completely pointless (a bit like Vista's new desktop).
Posted by: Paul M | July 14, 2006 12:01 PM
If anyone is interested, this video gives a good overview of some the things Xgl is capable of - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_2vKq5cZk
There are plenty more of these on youtube if you're still hungry, search for xgl.
Posted by: Daniel Brownlees | July 12, 2006 11:14 PM
And this is useful in some way? In any way?
Posted by: Graham Lees | July 12, 2006 4:11 PM
It might be a good idea to get those images under 50kb - Think of the people on dialup :(
Posted by: Michael Murphy | July 11, 2006 7:53 PM