Novell tweaks Linux for better graphics, video performance

[IGBT]

Text

The improvements will be available to Linux users running PCs with 3-D graphics cards and relatively up-to-date hardware, meaning computers that have been bought in the last 18 months or so, said Mancusi-Ungaro.

Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert with Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., applauded the transparency and extra desktop features. But he was less impressed with the ability for application windows to be dragged halfway between desktops and viewed in 3-D. He called it ?a great way to show off graphical horsepower but basically useless.?

Nielsen said Linux?s reputation for having a user interface that's less attractive and harder to use than those in Apple?s Mac OS X or Microsoft?s Windows is well-earned, and a natural result of its technical heritage.

?Linux has always been able to attract great programming talent, but not as many talented usability people,? Nielsen said. He noted that it?s often difficult in the free-wheeling open-source culture to veto new features that add marginal utility at the cost of increased complexity. ?To have a simple unified experience that is good for the average user requires someone to say no,? he said.

 

[Robor]

That looks pretty cool. I like the top screenshot.

Would this be a new manager like Gnome or KDE?

EDIT: I like this comment... "But because the code is being made available as open-source, he expects XGL to be adopted by other flavors of Linux such as Red Hat or Ubuntu."

🙂

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Robor
That looks pretty cool. I like the top screenshot.

Would this be a new manager like Gnome or KDE?

EDIT: I like this comment... "But because the code is being made available as open-source, he expects XGL to be adopted by other flavors of Linux such as Red Hat or Ubuntu."

🙂

XGL is lower than KDE and Gnome. drag posted some information in what I believe is the original thread.

 

[Nothinman]

EDIT: I like this comment... "But because the code is being made available as open-source, he expects XGL to be adopted by other flavors of Linux such as Red Hat or Ubuntu."

Except for the fact that it took a lot of prodding to get them to make their code public. They kept saying they were going to release it as OSS but kept putting off releasing the code.

 

[drag]

Ya.. Although these videos are higher quality then the screen captures on a handheld camera that I had in the other thread.

Most of the potential isn't going to be realized for this thing quite yet as it's not a standalone X server. It's hacked a bit to make it run full screen on a normal X server. Right now it's all about just increasing performance and eye candy. It does this by utilizing a card's 3d drivers rather then the not-so-good current XAA drivers that leave the video card very underutilized.

However once it's been built to be stand-alone X server then it should provide other aspects like increase security (since it theoretically doesn't need to run suid anymore then any other 3d application) and make it much easier to produce advanced video drivers (Free and propriatory) for Linux.

Other things like having a 'modular X server' will make it easier to modernize the desktop in other ways. Such as using Linux's excelent hotplugging support to make it simplier to hotplug input devices and things like monitors and even possibly video cards and have them configured and running properly.

This is still a ways off though.