XGL: day to day usage
January 28th, 2007Yesterday, this YouTube vid got dugg by over 5000 users, though there was nothing new about it. I have seen it for the first time a long time ago, and it is on YouTube for 7 months now. After seeing it for the first time, I started wondering how practical could such a desktop environment be. Except for the people that usualy have their desktop full of icons, there’s no practical need for it.
This video found on NetBoy’s page caught my attention: here’s something that’s not spreaded and popular as it should be - XGL. Now that’s something I can use and find is useful: dividing your applications on a number of desktops and sorting them by type or by usage or by anything you may want. The best thing about it is that it’s free.
For all I care, I would love the first 30 minutes of play; I wouldn’t use all the features or at least most of them on a day-to-day basis, but it would definitely ease my works more than BumpTop. Real life doesn’t always apply to desktops.
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Comments
Dude, multiple desktops is a feature that’s been around since *at least* the early ’90s, and probably the ’80s. It’s implemented in basically every window manager nowadays, including on windows (litestep), and doesn’t require the fanciness of XGL.
I wasn’t saying that it’s spectacular, not by far. I’m just saying that there are better ways to do it than BumpTop which people loved as I saw 2 days ago.
“Except for the people that usualy have their desktop full of icons, there’s no practical need for it.”
Maybe you’re an exceptionally organized person, but when I walk around my office I see every single desktop full of icons. I agree that it’s not really anything groundbreaking, but neither is XGL, as far as UI design. Linux desktops have had this functionality since the very first implementations of Gnome and KDE; XGL is just a layer of insane eye candy that lays on top of it; nothing has changed. Bumptop is at least a new idea…
I think you are mistaken; bumptop, while old, is a completely novel way of interaction - xgl and beryl are merely extensions of a window manager, which still makes use of existing means of interaction.
No, bumptop may not present anything quite as flashy as this, but you’re missing the point. This video is all just special effects and multiple desktops. What BumpTop does, is make the virtual desktop come even closer to the physical desktop by allowing users to work with files just as they would in real life. It makes it easy to workwith and move files, and more convenient than using folders cause you can’t see whats in a folder just by looking at it.
Plus bumptop makes your files 3d objects that physically interact with each other. While this video was in fact cool, it is completely different.
BumpTop looks like crap and I would never interact with my computer that way.
xgl is nice, and ran really quick on my old athlonxp1600+,512MB,GF3 but then my opengl in wine (and maybe everywhere) stopped working. I reversed the install steps and did not get back. I was like… warcraft or jiggly windows which is more important. now 8 months later, i want to try again…
@Joshua: Folders and labels are great in working with files. If you had thousands of files it wouldn’t be that easy to work with. If you had a few of them, it would be somewhat fun, but you could also do it with regular desktops.
Yes, you can’t see what’s in a folder just by looking at it, but then again, you don’t just open random folders: you are looking for something and most of the times you know where to look for. If not, the search apps are handy, but not the subject of our discussion. I don’t imagine people thinking “I wonder what I’ve put in that folder; argh I have to click it twice”.
Multiple desktops is in XP, it’s just not enabled as default - you don’t need litestep.
XGL and Beryl etc aren’t anything new. They are really just another way of viewing the xwindows multiple desktop paradigm.
That said, I find xgl to be extremely useful and practical. The fact that I can middleclick and see all my windows on six desktops, mapped onto a transparent cube, is just hugely useful.
Pizpot: Try Beryl. It lets you switch between xgl and normal gnome very quickly.
This video could have been only 1 min long… lost interest after 1 minute. As for bumptop, it brings a different way to interact with files as object. It’s not only cool effects for windows/workspace.
Anyone know the music song or group doing the background music?
@Jason: quote from a comment made by Snakedal337 on digg:
“BTW, the music is by Machinae Supremacy, and they actually are a rather decent band, who release TONS of music to the public ;-)”
@Dave Law: Multiple desktops/workspaces are even older than that, as I remember using them on fvwm in 1995. Perhaps there are older implementations still.
And now, 12 years later, Apple will even include them with Mac OS X Leopard :)
Bumptop is revolutionary. This sucked. It’s just multiple desktops with a little 3D fairy dust. Big wup.
Ramon, multiple desktops was one of my favorite things to tinker with on my Amiga computer, and Amiga’s version of it dates back to 1985.
As for bumptop, it’s nice, I suppose, but it’s not something I can operate with my hands in the normal fashion, so I don’t find it revolutionary so much as just ‘different.’ You may as well spend time and resources making a prettier and prettier mouse for someone with no arms. Although maybe with a multitouch display the bumptop would work for me.
Personally I think the weak link here are the input devices, not the GUI.