Xgl is an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL via glitz. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects by a compositing window manager such as Compiz or Beryl. The project was started by David Reveman of Novell (SUSE) and first released on January 2, 2006.
Simply put, it’s a lot of eye candy. What I would like to take a look at here is, is it worth the bloat? It should be noted that I am far from a Luddite, but is there any real purpose for this rather than simple eye candy.
XGL takes advantage of modern GPU’s (or video cards) which have 3D acceleration. Therefore most of the burden of CPU time is handled by the GPU which isn’t normally doing much during traditional computer use. However, without a 3D GPU, your main processor takes the brunt of the load. If you don’t have a decent 3D GPU, turn around now and don’t look back. (I tried this) Your once decently powered box, becomes the grand poubah of slotheness.
But more than eye candy, XGL has some very intriguing features. First and foremost, I am a really big fan of the desktop cube. Holding your ALT key and a simple click and drag of your mouse sends your desktop in a frenzy. You can see all 4 of your virtual desktops in real time as a cube that you can control. This makes task management very handy especially for a person like me (currently, I have local e-mail, gmail, facebook, open office (4 instances of), contact manager, gaim, mplayer and a host of file browsing windows open) I distribute my tasks through out the cube. Literally by clicking and dragging the windows to the edge of the screen where the cube snaps into action allowing you to drop your windows where you please. As its real time, you can even see movies playing or updates as you spin the cube.
The fading of windows is not new, however it adds a pleasing aura to your work, rather than the hard edge of a traditional window intrusively snapping up. However, as much as I like the wobble of window dragging, this is absolutely useless, but rater pleasing to the eye and you cant help but play with it like a cat with a foil ball. ;)
I defiantly see this going somewhere. A system like this would add a really nice dimension to surface computing (for another time, Google this if you are interested, you will be quite surprised if you have not heard of this hidden gem of development)
One may say well,
Closing and Sources:
Well, If you have not seen XGL yet, I highly recommend you take a gander here at the YouTube demo > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_2vKq5cZk.
If you would like to try it first hand, grap the Ubuntu ISO and burn it. It’s a live OS so you can boot Linux and enable XGL without formatting your system. Just burn the disk and boot off it. Simple as that. You can get Ubuntu here.
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Defanition of XGL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl
