Novell Linux Video

MBrown

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2001
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Text Most likely a repost but this is an amazing video. It makes me want to get back into linux.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Probably same video posted elsewere, but now on google!

Btw if you want to try it out without having to install experimental Ubuntu Dapper or Gentoo try this torrent for a XGL demo live-cd:
as seen on TV
 

P0ldy

Senior member
Dec 13, 2004
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Yes, the livecd is AWESOME. It even worked on a Athlon 1500+ with a Geforce2, albeit poorly. I think it's because it loads everything into RAM by default however and the comp only had 256MB in it at the time. But on my A64/6600GT/1GB RAM it was flawless. Booting into XP after that makes it look doubly worse than normal.
 

Alienwho

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
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Very cool. So is Novell still going to be focusing more on Gnome? I'm new to linux, but in my experience I prefer KDE over gnome.
 

SleepWalkerX

Platinum Member
Jun 29, 2004
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Originally posted by: Alienwho
Very cool. So is Novell still going to be focusing more on Gnome? I'm new to linux, but in my experience I prefer KDE over gnome.

They're equally maintained, but I think they like Gnome better.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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I think at this point Novell is concentrating mainly on business/enterprise desktop arena. In that situation it seems like Gnome has several advantages over KDE.

The number one reason is that Redhat is the current leader in 'enterprise' Linux workstations and servers and they use Gnome. Since they are there first it makes sense that Novell should conform to people's expectations. (Linux looks like Gnome, therefore gnome equals Linux sort of thing.. superficial stuff)

Other things is that Gnome has gotten pretty good at the whole 'usability' thing. Lots of studies compared to KDE. It's a relatively simple and unified interface. Very 'business'-like with the added capability for impressive eye candy coming out of the Compiz/Metacity/XGL/AIXGL camp. (which actually matters, beleive it or not. Screwy as it seems people will actually choose a entertaining desktop for a workstation simply because it's entertaining.) Simple + flashy is kinda good.

Probably more important then that though is the fact that the Gnome project has put a lot of work into maintaining ABI/API backward compatability and have done a pretty good job of it. Pretty much any application made for the 2.x.y series of Gnome should work now and into the forseeable future. Even with the addition of Cairo graphics, XGL, and other stuff everything should be mostly compatable (baring bugs, of course).

With KDE your dealing with a completely new API with the QT4 release from Trolltech. It's designed to make it fairly easy to port applications from Qt3 to Qt4, of course, but it is not compatable in the sense that it can run Qt3 programs. Since Qt4 is 'next gen', ISVs and business programmers aren't excited about programming for something that is pretty much obsolete and may not be around in 3-4 years. (qt3)

Also with KDE if you develop non-GPL compatable programs you have to buy a license from Trolltech.. which with Gnome you do not. So that's a kinda of a big deal to some people.

Also you have some good high-level language support for Gnome. Python is now pretty much a official Gnome language. (previously it was C-only-mostly). That helps programmers that come from a Linux/Unix background to do 'rapid application development'. Along with Glade and such. Also Novell has put a lot of work into Mono for 'RAD' programmers that only have knowledge of Windows and C#/.NET languages (and unlike Microsoft, Novell is actually using this stuff in their desktop).

Also in Novell's case they bought out Ximian before getting Suse and Ximian was a very Gnome-centric setup. Novell started with that development environment first.

That's not to say that KDE sucks, or that KDE isn't easy to use, or that KDE isn't suitable for business or anything like that. Koffice is pretty kick-ass set of applications, for instance.

I think that after the next release of QT and KDE gets out and gets a couple of releases under it's belt then it will probably garner a LOT more attention then it is right now from business-types.
 

Alienwho

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
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drag -

Post more - And I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

What do you run and why? Any cool little tricks/tips you have? Also how mainstream is this XGL technology? Anybody out there actually running it right now?
 

P0ldy

Senior member
Dec 13, 2004
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A handful of people are running XGL right now, but it's prefaced with the ideas that it's still alpha software.

Gentoo and Ubuntu both have HOWTOs on getting it up and running.
 

Cdeck

Member
May 13, 2005
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i have it. i never looked at the memory footprint that closely but from what i can tell, it only uses 9 Mb. one fellow claimed he had it running on a 600 MHz comp with a fx5200. this is a far cry from vista's requirements.
 

MBrown

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2001
5,726
35
91
Originally posted by: drag
Probably same video posted elsewere, but now on google!

Btw if you want to try it out without having to install experimental Ubuntu Dapper or Gentoo try this torrent for a XGL demo live-cd:
as seen on TV
I downloaded and I am running it now. This thing is amazing. I showed it to my dad and he was shocked.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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I run Debian Unstable. I like it, I like apt-get. I like everything being pre-compiled and supported by one entity. There are a huge number of packaged software supported by Debian.

But it's definately not for everybody. For a business environment Debian Stable, Suse, or Redhat would be much more perferable.

Actually I like most Linux distros.

As for XGL... It's not mainstream yet. There are lots of little details and things that need to be fixed.. and in the form that Suse is running; that XGLX (Novell's X server) is probably never going to be mainstream, and neither is AIGLX from the Fedora/Redhat guys. Although I expect that most of us will have the option of running either of these things by year's end.

Thing is is that there is a lot of work that is needed to be put into X windows to modernize it. The OpenGL-accelerated-ness is just one part of it. The first big step was getting it 'modularized'.. which X.org accomplished with the X11R7.0 release. This allows quite a bit of work to take place as it divides the code base up into more easily delt with chunks.

So there now has to be a lot of work done to improve all of it's peices and clean out years and years of cruft.

The thing about XGLX or AIGLX is that the require you to already have a running X server.. So your basicly running the old 2-d accelerated X server to have the 3-d accelerated X server stuff ran on top of that.

The goal is to have a completely standalone X server running in userspace. Just another full screen OpenGL application. XeGL is suppose to be the ultimate goal.. at this time. However it requires that work be done on the current generation of 3d X servers in order to get all the details ironed out. The core.. XGL.. will need to be improved and will benifit all of this. Once that is done that should simplify video driver development for Linux considurably. Performance should improve as should the stability and quality of the fully accelerated drivers aviable for Linux. (both free and propriatory)... And since it's based on a open and standardized API (OpenGL) it should improve portability and performance on other operating systems also.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done besides that.

Stuff like new core X libraries. Getting rid of XLib and all that very very crusty stuff associated with that. Then build a shim that makes sure that backward compatability with older programs is kept.
see http://xcb.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Another example of a improvement that needs to be done is the configuration and hotplug support. Right now with Linux you have very good hotplug support. Support for USB devices, harddrives, firewire, etc etc. Even PCI express cards and cpus... Even memory hotplug is being worked on. (obviously only usefull on hardware that supports those features) We now have HAL for a hardware abstraction layer, sysfs and Dbus that allows a good way to communicate to user-land applications on changes elseware on the system..

The unfortunately reality right now is that X Windows can't use any of that. Any sort of configuration change you want to be done with X needs to be done pretty much manually. Also it can't realy react to changes and needs to be restarted. Having multiple mice with multiple different features (like say a pressure sensitivity Wacom tablet and then be able to use all the buttons on a fancy logitech mouse) is difficult to manage and keep working properly even though all those features are supported by Linux and various applications.

All of that gives a very 'Welcome to Windows 98' feel to the Linux desktop. So that needs to be fixed. And with the modular X code base it should be able to be fixed independant from everything else going on. (so you see why that is important)

Eventually you should be able to plug a 2nd monitor into your video card and have the screen detected and setup fairly automaticly and your desktop expanded to fit the new dimensions. You should be able to end up running 3d accelerated games and graphics from a remote server on a lan or even on the internet as about as fast as you can as if they were installed on the computer your running at the time. You should be able to eventually move applications from computer to computer by simply dragging them or sending them to other screens. Send the output of running applications to other users even. All sorts of crazy stuff like that. But that's a very long way off at this point.

Some weird things you can muck around with right now.. You can combine DMX with Chromium to do insane stuff like render a real-time 3d application accross many multiple screens and many multiple computers...
http://dmx.sourceforge.net/
http://chromium.sourceforge.net/

That stuff is obviously not mainstream or even part of X.org.. but it's possible and is used in high-end visualization clusters used in government/educational/research type stuff. Here you can find people mucking around with a cluster like that for some fun. Playing Quake3 accross 24 monitors on 12 Linux machines. http://www.plastk.net/ (and people think Nvidia SLI is cool...)

So that is combining multiple Linux boxes into one big display.. But it's possible to go the other way also..

Divide a single Linux box into multiple displays.

This article explains how to use standard video cards and usb mouse/keyboard stuff to turn a make a single Linux box support multiple GUI users simultaniously.. In this example... 6 users on a single machine.
http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

Unfortunately it wasn't especially stable. This capability is very new with the latest release from X.org.
 

Cdeck

Member
May 13, 2005
58
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beautiful post drag. i have just recently been looking this. i am flabbergasted how far they have come over the last three years and you are right, the possibilities are endless. i am not going to get into vista for my four comps at home. i'd would rather donate the equivalent money to these various organizations who will truly expand the possibilities.
 

Vad3r

Senior member
Nov 25, 2000
274
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0
my Brother told me about this XGL about a month ago. I couldn't believe it. I downloaded at work, and showed it to some of the Desktop Dept guy's (OSX people), no one could believe it.
Also amazing is the hardware that can run it, it helps, but you don't "have to" have top of the line graphics to run it.

Novell XGL Desktop

Do a search on XGL linux desktop, a few nice videos out there showing it off. As mentioned, a livecd to try it as well. So cool.
 

Brazen

Diamond Member
Jul 14, 2000
4,259
0
0
Just a note to anybody disappointed this is focusing on gnome instead of kde:

Since I first started dabbling in linux 5 years ago, I've preferred KDE over Gnome. I had occasionally ventured into gnome, but always came back to KDE. Keep in mind however, I pretty much only use linux on servers with CLI only. This past week though, due mostly to the Kororaa livecd and hearing about the new deskbar in Gnome 2.14, I decided to once again venture into Gnome territory and install it on my desktop.

This time, I think I'm hooked. I don't know what it was, it just clicked this time. Everything suddenly seems to be more intuitive and better laid out then KDE, when previously KDE had been easier for me to just pick it up and go. I know there is a ton of customization options that I no longer have, but frankly I don't feel like I need them this time, Gnome is just working the way I want it to now, and I've gotten the desktop to look how I want (albeit, very KDE-ish looking). And there ARE usability improvements, I've always known that, it's just that Gnome has gotten to the point where the trade-offs are worth it (to me).

So anyway, kudos to Gnome, KDE fans should at least consider it (although I know the next version of KDE is supposed to be massively improved also).
 
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