Video of XGL demo

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:45 pm

HOLY SH!T.

http://freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi

Chess · Post by **Chess** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:06 am

That is spectacular. I am literally speechless! I want it now!

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:40 am

The part where they run Quake 3 while using transparency, wobbly windows, and 3D desktop switching is rediculously awesome.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:50 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:The part where they run Quake 3 while using transparency, wobbly windows, and 3D desktop switching is rediculously awesome.

They have got to have a good video card for that. I have Xorg 7 installed and XGL but I can't seem to get compiz to run for Xfce4 so I'm emerging Gnome. It sucks it doesn't work with KDE. I was surprised how easy the transition between Xorg 6.8 and 7 was. I didn't even have to change my /etc/X11/xorg.conf although a few programs didn't work on the new Xorg and I had to uninstall them (Glest and Wormux are the only programs I really miss). The Gentoo XGL guide is pretty good (though it didn't work as flawlessly as the Modular Xorg 7 one

) I hope it works with Gnome.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:57 am

I just hope this works out to be something useful/cool. I don't need wobbly windows, or transparency, but sweetass accelerated graphics would be awesome.

Post by **Patrick** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 2:56 am

I'm curious to see what the minimum requirements are to achieve those effects. I would think you would need a decent video card and processor. If they can do this with a mid-level machine while Vista is a pig (like it probably will) they will open some peoples eyes to linux.

Madar · Post by **Madar** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:41 am

This has got to be running on a multicore system (although I pray it isn't). I dug around on the freedesktop.org site looking for some documentation on the hardware used for this demo but sadly nothing came of my efforts. Some of the notes sugest a multithreaded glx approach which seems to indicate to me that some sort of SMP magic is hard at work here. Absolutely mindblowing eyecandy, but have to agree with Snarkout in that I hope this turns out to be something truly useful and not just overhead sucking shine, if I wanted that I'd buy a Mac...

thetza · Post by **thetza** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:06 am

i'm not usually a big fan of eyecandy, but when its taken that far, hot DAMN!

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 4:41 pm

I got compiz working. Its pretty sweet. I love the weird bouncing effect on all the menus. It doesn't seem to be crapping up on my computer. I have a nVidia GeForce 6200, AMD 3700+ (overclocked to 2.7GHz), and 1.25GB of RAM even with KDE going in another virtual terminal. It doesn't seem to use much at all CPU and compiz takes up 56.9MiB Virtual Memory and gnome-window-decorator (I think thats the program that ties compiz and gnome together) takes up 62.8MiB according to the gnome system monitor. overall thats note to bad. Although I don't know how good of a graphics card you need.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:11 pm

CptnObvious999 wrote:Although I don't know how good of a graphics card you need.

When asked about this Nat Friedman was very relaxed about it, instead of being all crazy like Microsoft that you need a powerful graphics card, he seemed confident that most users would be able to use it.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:19 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:
CptnObvious999 wrote:Although I don't know how good of a graphics card you need.
When asked about this Nat Friedman was very relaxed about it, instead of being all crazy like Microsoft that you need a powerful graphics card, he seemed confident that most users would be able to use it.

Yeah mine is by no means a high end card but not that bad either. I think I got it for $70 I think. (Now its probly $50 or less

)

BTW I managed to get compiz to work with kde but I can see why no one prances up and down for it on KDE, its kinda buggy. It has trouble with the bouncy cursor and doesn't allow for a system tray unless its from a gtk app and the pager applet for kicker only shows one desktop. Theres probly other stuff wrong with it but I didn't bother looking any further.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:40 pm

CptnObvious999 wrote:Yeah mine is by no means a high end card but not that bad either. I think I got it for $70 I think. (Now its probly $50 or less )

BTW I managed to get compiz to work with kde but I can see why no one prances up and down for it on KDE, its kinda buggy. It has trouble with the bouncy cursor and doesn't allow for a system tray unless its from a gtk app and the pager applet for kicker only shows one desktop. Theres probly other stuff wrong with it but I didn't bother looking any further.

I'll be waiting for the KDE people to support XGL, because in my everyday life, I don't want X to crash or any sort of instability in that area, I like systems on which you just hit the power button and then up it comes and stays.

Also, with the current generation of KDE, there is no real benefit to XGL in my mind, because KDE is not yet using SVG and all that cool stuff for the graphics and XGL is not being utilized. Also we don't have Plasma to give us all sorts of nifty desktop stuff, so what's the point of using XGL with KDE at this point?

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:59 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:
CptnObvious999 wrote:Yeah mine is by no means a high end card but not that bad either. I think I got it for $70 I think. (Now its probly $50 or less )

BTW I managed to get compiz to work with kde but I can see why no one prances up and down for it on KDE, its kinda buggy. It has trouble with the bouncy cursor and doesn't allow for a system tray unless its from a gtk app and the pager applet for kicker only shows one desktop. Theres probly other stuff wrong with it but I didn't bother looking any further.
I'll be waiting for the KDE people to support XGL, because in my everyday life, I don't want X to crash or any sort of instability in that area, I like systems on which you just hit the power button and then up it comes and stays.

Yeah I don't plan on using it everyday until it becomes more stable (I *NEED* system tray icons) but its nice to test it out and see what is coming. The future is looking good

Tsuroerusu wrote:Also, with the current generation of KDE, there is no real benefit to XGL in my mind, because KDE is not yet using SVG and all that cool stuff for the graphics and XGL is not being utilized. Also we don't have Plasma to give us all sorts of nifty desktop stuff, so what's the point of using XGL with KDE at this point?

The boing boing effect

All the graphics effects are the same as with gnome only more unstable. Also KDE does use SVG just not that much because none of the major icon sets use it and SVG isn't that popular of a format yet. Switching from bitmap to vector is a hard transition for most graphic artists so I expect it to be a while before I see a lot of SVG

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 8:54 pm

CptnObvious999 wrote:The boing boing effect All the graphics effects are the same as with gnome only more unstable. Also KDE does use SVG just not that much because none of the major icon sets use it and SVG isn't that popular of a format yet. Switching from bitmap to vector is a hard transition for most graphic artists so I expect it to be a while before I see a lot of SVG

KDE 4.0 will be using SVG, and lots of it I can tell ya

What I hope XGL can help provide is a more useable, and less resource-hungry, SuperKaramba-thing in the form of Plasma.

Ryochan7 · Post by **Ryochan7** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:53 am

I have tried XGL and it is pretty good so far. The only problems that I have with it are that video playback is fairly CPU intensive and the version of cairo required for XGL causes firefox to be extremely slow (even without using XGL). It will be awesome once XGL matures a bit. I am far more impressed with XGL than with anything that I have seen relating to Windows Vista eye candy.