A techy friend of mine sent me this video, and as I proceeded to watch, I was blown away by what I saw. Welcome to the next generation of desktops: http://www.freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi
Well, it looks really nice, but nothing mindblowing. They're still just doing logical extensions to the existing special effects in OSes. Will somebody ever make something conceptually "out-there" but functional?
what amazes me is that it runs under gnome, not kde. Gnome isnt a graphic-monster gui. And to answer to paulo, it runs on Suse linux.
I dint ask what the OS it was running on was... Also the whole point of this is that it runs on both KDE and Gnome. Its just a graphic-monster gui add-on.
The multiple rotating desktop thing is the most exciting, it's pretty much the only part of that video that adds some kind of new functionality. And yeah, as a whole the video does scream "OSX"...
Apart from the rotating desktop thing, the rest seems like rubbish I would just turn off as soon as I had it running. I mean, I don't see the point in most of it other than to waste system resources.
May look nice, but you STILL can't get good apps for *nix. I'd love it - but it's no use if I can't work or play in it :-(
nothing blew me away. You can customize almost anything with Aston Shell, and then the spinning cube effect my friend had for a week on his OS before it got old. These are nothing but stlyish flair, that make the OS do nothing different.
You CAN work and play about anything, its just that people seem to think everything on linux is free, so when they need to buy something at 40 bucks, they get all angry.
Actually, I think it really has to do with the fact that NOTHING in Linux works out of the box (it's a pun, get it! Because few Linux apps come in a box! Haha!), you have to configure the hell out of most of it to get it to work the way you want. I spent a good amount of time tweaking my WinXP setup just right, but Linux still frustrated me to no end - about the only thing I WASN'T expected to do was recompile the kernel, although I had a number of people suggest that. Joe End User certainly isn't going to want to fight that battle. And you're right - you CAN run almost anything on Linux, but you forgot to mention that it's about as easy as jumping through flaming hoops over a tiger pit while kissing your own ass. As for that demo - it's neat, I guess, but far from useful. Do the edges of your windows need to deform as you drag them across the desktop? Will you ever need to be able to play Quake 2 deathmatch underneath a translucent terminal window? There comes a time when the bells and whistles in an OS are entirely superfluous, and I find them annoying in their uselessness. I've disabled all of the fancy sliding and fading effects in Windows XP; Why? Because they're annoying and take up system resources. I'm not saying that an OS or a GUI can't look fancy, but it doesn't have to come at the expense of CPU cycles or visual clutter. The BeOS operating system, for example, had a GUI that I consider to be one of the most visually appealing I've ever seen. And someone needs to tell them that a 3D interface is a stupid idea and they should never attempt anything like that again. Wait. That's a little harsh, let me rephrase that: In the current keyboard/mouse/single monitor user experience paradigm, a three-dimensional interface is a useless idea to follow. Computer users are more acclimated to the desktop metaphor, and the combination of a keyboard and mouse as input devices are perfectly suited to that. The use of these devices in a simulated 3D interface, however, is inadequate, unless users find themselves compelled to adapt to a FPS-like control scheme, and even then productivity is lost as the users acclimate themselves to the input. To accurately navigate a simulated 3D environment with the fluency that a typical user can navigate the 2D desktop metaphor would require input devices far more sophisticated than a mouse and keyboard. I'm not enough of a far-sighted visionary to tell you what WOULD work, but I do know that our current setup won't. On a slightly related note, if you happen to be bored, I encourage you to check out Tactile3d (http://www.tactile3d.com). It's a simulated 3D file manager similar in concept to the matrix in William Gibson's Neuromancer, and it proves my point entirely - you'll probably have fun playing in it for a few minutes, but you'll ultimately uninstall it because it's more gee-whiz than practical.
I thought that until a while ao - then I installed Ubuntu, which is debian based. One awesome thing about being debian based is that with one short but hyphenated word you can get anything you need. That word is "apt-get" Makes life so damn easy, just open up the terminal, type something like "apt-get install firefox" (or in ubuntu's case "sudo apt-get install firefox"). It'll download and install firefox, and any dependancies (software such as libraries required for firefox to run) and then hey presto, your in business. Really does make life incredibly easy. If you can't handle the terminal, then there are a number of gui package managers which are basically frontends for apt-get. synaptic comes with ubuntu, and is the "official" way of installing software in it. The only complication I have had is getting dual displays working on my FX5200. It wasn't installed with the graphics driver (which I of course got from apt-get) and the only way I think I could get dual displays working was through editing xorg.conf. But I read the readme and it wasn't too bad. Not the kind of thing I would get my mum to do, But i wouldn't have her installing drivers in any OS
See, that sounds like the intelligent way of handling packages and dependencies, something that should have been implemented YEARS ago. I've given several versions of Mandrake and Red Hat a try, and figuring out what dependencies I needed to satisfy to get a certain package to install usually involved a combination of fresh chicken's blood, powdered bones of the dead, and an old priest & a young priest. I may one day give Ubuntu a shot if I end up with a spare hard drive.
my only real problem with linux is the fact that it's useless without broadband. I connect to the internet through my cell phone with a usb bluetooth dongle... i used to love linux back in college when i was on a dual 10 gigabit connection (I chose my college because it had a backbone connection running through the campus). Now that i'm slower than dialup, it takes 6-8 hours just to download a new kernel... I do still dual boot both of my laptops though, but that's because i need certain "security" applications for work...
GSL: The sad thing is, that "tweaking" is necessary for any computer. Win, Linux, Mac -- whatever. Nothing works perfectly out of the box, and WinXP requires all sorts of stupid fucked up tricks to get it to work (akin to holding your arm straight out to get good reception, like I used to do as a younger man). Linux, while requiring more tweaks, assumes that you know what you're doing, and "want" to get under the hood. If you don't... by all means, get a WinXP box, and spend another $50 on AntiVirus, and maybe more on proper spyware, and of course, pray. Not saying one is better than the other (I use both, avidly) but they are different beasts. I will say, I wish Adobe would put their stuff out on Linux. Gnome is good, but I like PS better, and there is no good vector drawing tool on Linux.
