decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more... 		decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

You won't find me on Facebook

Donate

Donate Paypal

No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.

What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments

Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Novell Contributes Xgl and the Community Offers Kororaa LiveCD
Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 06:37 AM EST

Novell is on a roll. First, they announced they were contributing Xgl to the community, with its 3D capabilities. That was in February. Now they tell us they are dropping the Novell from their Linux desktop name and rebranding as SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and this summer's release will have not only Xgl but something else Novell developed, a real-time macro interpreter for OpenOffice.org which can read the most common Microsoft Excel spreadsheet macros.

Here's a bit of the announcement about Xgl:
Novell Raises the Bar for the Linux Desktop
Significant enhancements to Xgl framework enable development of advanced graphics to enhance functionality for end users

Novell is announcing its contribution of the Xgl graphics subsystem and the 'Compiz ' compositing manager to the X.org project. These enhancements open up a whole world of hardware acceleration, fancy animation, separating hardware resolution from software resolution, and more. As a result, Linux desktops will become more usable, end-user productivity will increase, and Linux is firmly positioned at the forefront of client computing technology.

Under the leadership of Novell's David Reveman, Novell has sponsored and led the development of this powerful new graphics subsystem for Linux since late 2004. Xgl is the X server architecture layered on top of OpenGL and takes advantage of available accelerated 3D rendering hardware.

They have screenshots and videos of Xgl on that page, as mpg, ogg and streaming flash, so you can see the true transparency, shadow and the "movie cube".

So they release Xgl to the community, and a month later, we get something exciting to enjoy and play with, Kororaa LiveCD, which is an easy way to install Gentoo, they say, that features Xgl. I learned about it from an email from Groklaw member 'troll', which he said I could share with you. Since it's the weekend, he thought I might like to play, and he remembered how interested I was in Looking Glass.

Here's his email:

Dear PJ.

Yesterday a piece of news has caught my attention, a new Linux live distribution called Kororaa LiveCD!

Kororaa is featuring the newest thing in Xwindow developement developed by SUSE (Novell) programmers and introduced a few days ago, Xgl. Xgl is a technology that can use the incredible power modern graphics cards have for drawing desktop items in Xwindow.

I have downloaded an iso image, burned it and booted a PC with it. I would like to say that my experience was "breathtaking", "astonishing", "jawdropping" but I simply can't do that. It would be a gross understatement. The desktop in Kororaa does incredible things, like translucent wobbling windows on the face of rotating 3D cube, yet it is much more responsive than the most spartan window manager optimized for speed I have experienced. And all that on a relatively modest system.

One user said that after trying this out his new Mac seems to have a dull, clunky and unresponsive graphics environment.

Just search the web for xgl-demo1.xvid to get an idea. Virtual desktops we know from Linux (Xwindow) are placed on sides on cube. You can drag and turn the cube in 3D together with windows playing video, you can adjust translucence of windows and other things. The windows behave as if they were from heavy rubber and when you move them they are wobbling.

Just download the video and then try Kororaa live CD.

The point is, you can *try it yourself* on an ordinary PC that is up to 2 years old and is equipped with a modest graphics card that can "do" OpenGL. (Kororaa seems to have problem with Ati cards.)

You can even try the newest SUSE 10.1 beta6 where you can install xgl following these instructions.

I have never tried such an astonishing new technology, that would be so far ahead of everything else. I have read your article about Looking Glass some time ago and I thought you might be interested.

People all over the world are discussing if we need such an eye-candy. This is not about eye candy. Even if you switch off most of the effects, you still get a desktop that is MUCH more responsive to basic things, like dragging the window.

It is also reported to be working under Ubuntu after some tweaking.

I know. Irresistable, no? More rave reports from Eclipse Zone:

For those of you that didn't see it, Novell demo'ed what they are working on ... and it was basically a demo of XGL in all it's glory. Here is a short-cut to a video of the demonstration (large XVID video):
http://www.freedesktop.org/%7Edavidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi

As you can imagine, they received a standing ovation from the crowd.

At this point you are probably wondering what in the world this has to do with Eclipse (or, maybe you don't care). Well, in general I wanted to take this moment to say that Eclipse on XGL+Compiz is a blast . Everything from the open type dialog, to the code assist and quick-fix popups all fade and wobble in to focus under XGL. Eclipse still runs like a champ on Sun's Java, and everything worked flawlessly. Using Eclipse on side-3 of the cube while I write articles on side-2 is a perfect visual representation of what I've always struggled to remember to do with older releases of Gnome and KDE (multiple-workspaces is an old tool, but now that it's fun to do, I actually use it!)

I probably won't try it out until I get to feeling better, but the screenshots are spectacular. And if you would like to know if I need eye candy like this, the answer is, Yes! I absolutely do. The transparency appeals to me so, so much, because the way I work, I always have a lot of things open at once, and I hate trying to find where I put a window, so I can't wait to try this stuff and see if it helps.

Macros are very important to lawyers. Some can't live without them so they stick with Windows in spite of their misery, so this contribution is really an important development. Thank you, Novell, for doing that. Also for the very beautiful 3D.

Remember that Kororaa is beta stuff, and you need to check the specifications to make sure it will work on your computer, so if your computer ends up on its back on the living room floor with its little penguin feet up pointing straight up in the air, don't blame me. If you're not the beta type, think SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop when it is released this summer, with Xgl and macro playback capability. I'll likely try them both.

More screenshots on the Kororaa download info page, along with this quotation:

"I've tried about 100 different distro's over the past 2 years and can honestly say I've never seen anything on a PC as spectacular as Kororaa XGL... It makes the hairs on my neck stand up. It's that good. I'm like a kid who's found the keys to the local sweet shop, I just can't leave it alone... nearly fell out my seat the first time I spun the desktop. Once again thanks to all involved."
Andy - England.

Feldegast found screenshots of a Kororaa install. I have to try this ... when I get to feeling better. Today I feel like that penguin computer, just absolutely flattened. Talk to you when I recuperate. Meanwhile, have fun.


  


Novell Contributes Xgl and the Community Offers Kororaa LiveCD | 280 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Here
Authored by: feldegast on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 06:51 AM EST
So PJ can find them

---
IANAL
The above post is (C)Copyright 2006 and released under the Creative Commons
License Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic
Authored by: feldegast on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 06:53 AM EST
Please make links clickable, see instructions when posting comments

---
IANAL
The above post is (C)Copyright 2006 and released under the Creative Commons
License Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use

[ Reply to This | # ]

Novell Contributes Xgl and the Community Offers Kororaa LiveCD
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 07:45 AM EST
http: //lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-January/011922.html First notice from Dave Reveman was actually in January and you could get it via cvs back then. It does look pretty awesome, and I've tried it on a couple of systems that have newer ATI video cards. Watching a movie spanning across 2 planes of a cube is just way off the scale on the coolness factor.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Use BitTorrent!
Authored by: Jadeclaw on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 08:01 AM EST
When you want to download the LiveCD, use BitTorrent.
The Tracker is here
If you don't have a BitTorrent-Client, a List is found here.
I'm currently using Azureus, a Java-based client.
And of course, leave the Client open for a while after
the download is finished, so others profit as well.

---

Best regards
Jadeclaw.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Kid in the candy store
Authored by: Anni on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 08:09 AM EST
WAAAAH! Want one!

I watched the video and noticed in the end that my jaw was hanging. By the
dryness of my tongue I'd say my mouth had been open over 5 minutes. Now I have
to go and drink something.


---
Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Amazingly modest requirements
Authored by: oneandoneis2 on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 08:11 AM EST
I grabbed the LiveCD off BitTorrent the other day & had a play.

In addition to being just as responsive as reported above, it's impressive to
note that Kororaa works almost-flawlessly with a simple MX440 graphics card that
was old-hat when I bought it several years ago for a few pennies.

The only thing it struggled a bit with was doing the full 3D-reshaping thing to
Totem whilst it was playing a movie.

Makes me wonder how MS can justify Vista's requirements for a high-quality
graphics card when Linux can do the same things with such pathetically weak
ones!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Does the Mac have it too?
Authored by: IMANAL on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 09:55 AM EST
About a year ago I needed a roll-up poster and visited a small local business. A
guy with a Mac helped me out with some jagged .jpg:s and when he switched screen
my jaw dropped... It was a rotating desktop cube, very much like the one shown
here. I had only seen the Berlin/Fresco project by then and was really amazed.
Does anyone know what he may have used?

---
--------------------------
IM Absolutely Not A Lawyer

[ Reply to This | # ]

Kororaa Screen Resolution
Authored by: TerryC on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 10:29 AM EST
I grabbed the Kororaa Live CD a couple of days ago, when it was mentioned in Off
Topic. I can confirm that it is well worth the effort; when it works.

However, in common with many live CDs, I find that the detected screen
resolution is wrong and my monitor bleats about being out of range. Unlike many
live CDs, there doesn't seem to be a way of passing sensible values at boot time
to get it to work. Four of the five computers I have here have LCD displays and
give this problem, the remaining one has an older CRT display and works really
well.

I've googled for a solution, but haven't found anything so far. Any ideas?

---
Terry

[ Reply to This | # ]

Unlikely to Make an Impact
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 10:32 AM EST
The Xgl with Compiz design requires hardware accelerated OpenGL. At the moment
that only exists as either DRI drivers for a very small range of cards or
proprietary ATI/nvidia drivers for an even smaller range of cards. To make
things worse those drivers only exist for existing X servers from X.org and
XFree86 so that means you have to run two X servers in a stack and in all
likelihood you're using proprietary drivers; ugly, ugly, ugly. If you don't have
hardware accelerated OpenGL then Xgl is unusable, so people who can't use
proprietary drivers or DRI are excluded from the party. Unless an unexpected
revolution occurs and hardware accelerated OpenGL drivers appear in quantity
there's not much chance of Xgl making a long term difference.

The AIGLX technique that Fedora is adopting is much more sensible. AIGLX also
only supports a small range of hardware and probably you'll be using proprietary
drivers, but the difference is that AIGLX is optional. If you don't have
hardware accelerated OpenGL then the extra features "turn off" and you
still have a usable desktop. If you do have supported hardware then AIGLX offers
the same features as Xgl with Compiz; translucency, warping, etc.

Don't expect too much to come of this. Sun demoed similar technology many moons
ago and nothing came of it because the foundation - the hardware accelerated
drivers - are still not widespread enough. They aren't widespread because there
isn't enough information to create drivers and the hardware is far too
complicated for volunteers to reverse engineer in any meaningful timeframe. The
legality of companies like nvidia and ATI refusing to document their hardware is
something that should be seriously investigated. The situation is very similar
to when the car companies tried and failed to withhold technical information
from mechanics; the disclosure of technical information is mandatory for cars,
yet for video cards the groupthink is that companies are allowed to keep the
interfaces secret. Anybody who thinks this has anything to do with "trade
secrets" or "copyright" is ignorant of writing drivers for
hardware; there are no trade secrets that are exposed by disclosing register
locations and GPU bytecode instructions. Drooling over spinning cubes seems a
tad shallow when there's such an interesting and relevant legal problem staring
us right in the face.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Get well soon, PJ
Authored by: billyskank on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 10:34 AM EST
-billyskank

---
It's not the software that's free; it's you.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why drop the Novell name for Suse
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 10:48 AM EST
I wonder why Novell is dropping its name from the distribution. One would think
that the'd be proud of its brand.

Then it occurs to me that by using the Suse brand that Novell may be thinking of
selling off their Linux business. Keeping the Novell brand would not be
attractive to a buyer. Having the recognized Suse brand might be considerably
more attractive.

Is there any merit to this thought?

[ Reply to This | # ]

AIGLX
Authored by: kozmcrae on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 11:02 AM EST

There is a lot happening on the GNU/Linux look-and-feel front.  (Warning, shameless plug coming.)  Fedora Core 5 is taking a slightly more conservative approach called AIGLX.  The differences from XGL are spelled out here on the  Fedora Project Wiki.  They also give 1, 2 and 3 demo videos.  And there is a good article in the  South African Free Software magazine Tectonic on KDE4 [PDF].  It all sounds like great fun.   Switching from Windows to GNU/Linux is like going from Christmas once every 3 years to Christmas once a month.  It makes me wonder (not too hard though) how Microsoft will keep up while choking on so much GNU/Linux dust.

PJ, I hope you are feeling better soon.  We are all sending you healing thoughts.

Richard

---
Darl, have you been lying to us? I'm a frayed knot.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Next Step
Authored by: linuxfan on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 11:17 AM EST

This is definitely one of the top most exciting news I've seen for a long time! Put the FUN back into even the most boring computing task. Never mind time saving...

We can move windows across virtual desktops now for some time. What we need is to be able to move them across computers. This used to be possible 20 years ago in text mode. Of course with a cluster it can be done.

Imagine this type of responsive GUI and cross computer processing on a LAN... All users sharing available horse power. And there's a LOT of unused CPU power at any given time.

I thank you PJ for such an otherwise off topic article, but you surely have made my day! [Yeah I know, again. : )]

[ Reply to This | # ]

Am I just an old curmudgeon?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 11:54 AM EST

I've looked at these videos of translucent rotating desktop panes, and find myself asking, "Why?" - how do these help me do anything I couldn't before?

Is it just "Look - Shiny!"?

I'm sitting here at a machine running six apps at the moment, each full-screen, and KDE has six little buttons down on the task-strip telling me what they are and, occasionally, status. I click on a button, it fullscreens that app. I can't see what XGL gives me I haven't got.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people playing eight simultaneous movies in overlaid transparent rotating windows, telling themselves "What an imagination I've got!", but I really would like to know if there's any real beef in there. What am I missing?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Xgl - all the features of Vista
Authored by: kawabago on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 12:09 PM EST
without the Microsoft tax! What a wonderful gift. I've been using gl
screensavers with my photos and it just WOW's visitors. Everyone asks,
"Can I get that on Windows?" NO! Well maybe but you'd have to pay
someone more than it's worth to you so you wouldn't buy it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Novell Contributes Xgl and the Community Offers Kororaa LiveCD
Authored by: WojtekPod on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 02:27 PM EST
All I can say is:
Wow!
This is the best eye-candy on Linux I have seen so far.

The macros interpreter will be very needed in many places as well.

Wojciech Podgórni

[ Reply to This | # ]

Novell Contributes Xgl and the Community Offers Kororaa LiveCD
Authored by: zcat on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 03:49 PM EST
I've been playing with this under Dapper Flight-4 for about a week (flight-5 is
out btw, I'm downloading it now) - Very easy to get working.

I took it along to the PC-club meeting on Wendesday night, and again for the
workshop on Saturday. They were absolutely blown away!

This is running on an AMD 1700 and a very early TNT2 card. OpenGL and SDL don't
seem to be working properly, but the window effects (cube, wobble and alpha) are
all smooth and very impressive. And it definately feels more responsive than
plain Gnome or KDE on the same machine.

The kids ended up playing games on it for five hours while I helped everyone
else with Windows problems :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Think outside the box ...
Authored by: Dan M on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 07:48 PM EST
is an old engineering axiom

What we are seeing is the rollout of new technology. I'd like to shout that: New
Technology! Brought to you by, wait... the open source community. Project
Looking Glass has been in the pipe for a couple of years now and the result is
going to revolutionize the way we interact with our computers. First there was
the command line, then the mouse and graphical user interfaces. Then users and
developers eased the use of binding keystroke commands together with the mouse
to create a more efficient work flow. It is all coming full circle.

Recent studies have shown that computers have yet to make people more
productive. The stifling of innovation has forced us to use computers the same
way for more than a decade. After all, computers are just a means to an end. If
a tool makes the user more efficient, we all benefit. (Think less strain on the
environment and workers including energy production, raw materials and
landfills).

Eye candy? You bet, but, as a developer I typically have a dozen or so windows
open at any given moment. Research papers, technical documents, text editors,
manuals and code snippets all over the place, not to mention my actual
production environment (I used to swear by enlightenment because of the ease of
use of the pager. Talk about intuitive, everything was just there). Now, instead
of having to move through my windows and desktops, everything is right in front
of me, labelled, ready to be turned frontwards at a moments notice. Need to see
something side by side? No problem. This can be extrapolated to almost any
profession or use.

Sure, some are not going to see any benefits until others show the way. Others
will simply ignore it and become further locked into ancient methods. This is a
classic example of a ... disruptive technology. All graphically oriented
operating systems will begin to embrace it or fall by the wayside as quaint
anachronisms.

[ Reply to This | # ]

openoffice automation
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 12 2006 @ 08:18 PM EST
It's good to hear novell contributed intepreter to read excell macros. It whould
be better if openoffice have the automation feature like ms office. This is what
I
did in VB :

Dim Y As Word.Application

Set Y = CreateObject("Word.Application")
Y.Documents.Open FileName:=App.Path & "doc1.doc"
Y.Documents.DoThisAndDoThat
T.Documents.PrintThisAndThat

I hope it would soon be in openoffice.



[ Reply to This | # ]

Naysayers aside..
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 13 2006 @ 03:28 AM EST
This is not just eye-candy.

It really does make a difference - this *is* a better way of working - it may just be the catalyst needed to sway folks to consider other platform options.

-andy

[ Reply to This | # ]

Spreadsheets
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 13 2006 @ 01:21 PM EST
Well, they're nice as long as you don't trust them. Some, Excel gets the most notice here, can result in serious errors because the numeric data is not stored at high precision and under and overflow can cause serious glitches. The Burns Statistics pages have good deal of information about spreadsheet problems for the unwary: Spreadsheet addiction. So, I would not be surprised if users discovered "anomalous" results in sheets with translated macros.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It is also reported to be working under Ubuntu after some tweaking.
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 14 2006 @ 12:30 PM EST
This line in particular caught my eye;

It is also reported to be working under Ubuntu after some tweaking.

Well, some of that "tweaking" is updating your Ubuntu box to the
Dapper Dan branch first.

If you don't...well, I'm a Linux n00b, but I assume where I am is a bit worse
off than just an errant video driver that you can edit xorg.conf to fix.

Let's just say that the Ubuntu box is no longer usable. Good thing I mainly use
it for testing.

Although I'm sad, I was having fun playing Frozen Bubble. I brought the PC
upstairs to play games on.

-S

[ Reply to This | # ]
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.05 seconds