Friday, March 17, 2006

Kororaa Xgl Live CD

I've been reading about it everywhere and overall dismissing it so I thought I may as well have a look anyway. Yes, Novell have released this "next generation" X Server which combines OpenGL and hardware acceleration into a bog-standard X desktop.

Newsforge have an article about it and they're not the only ones.

Firstly, the use of a LiveCD for this is part of what they were designed for - tests of software you wouldn't want to even try and install but that someone's done the hard work for you, software that may well screw things up for you so you can test without having to install it.

Unfortunately, the demo AVI linked to in the above article shows you all it can do. And I have to say, I don't see what all the fuss is about. It's a minor point that all this is only supported on certain chipsets, almost all of which rely on a third-party binary-only driver (don't get me started again). If everyone in the world wants this, you'd better start complaining to nVidia and ATI now to open-source those drivers because otherwise it ain't gonna happen.

If a distribution (like, say, Suse) wants everyone to start running these sorts of desktops, there'd better be support and backing from someone who's going to keep this running once everyone in the world's got XGL... is that support going to come from Novell - I bet not, or at least without a hefty price. Bang goes advantage one of open-source operating systems. And what happens when nVidia change their support for OpenGL? Bye Bye Window Manager.

Anyway, skirting that minor issue - XGL looks very pretty. I've seen better effects in a few PC games menus, though. It's pretty but gimmicky. Having video overlaid over OpenGL graphics on a desktop that can spin around - very nifty. Now what could I use it for?

I've been able to have video play in the corner of my desktop for a while - it's called having a TV-card or a media player. My computer is also capable of transparencies (a feature which, incidentally, I turn off no matter what the operating system as there is very little legitimate use of it).

But personally, if I want something showing on the screen, it's because I'm watching it. If I don't, I don't want to have to squint to distinguish between different windows, or be distracted by a moving image somewhere else. Whether I'm working or just browsing, the normal use of my desktop ranges between one app full-screen and the rest minimized to another app full-screen and the rest minimized.

Before the advent of digital TV, I used to have a small window overlaying the bottom-right of my screen, in a position in which it did not obscure my use of scrollbars in my most common apps. However, I cannot remember a single occasion that I paid it any atttention like that. Occasionally, I would be waiting for a program to come on and would full-screen the TV when it did but there was nothing I did that would be aided by transparencies, hardware accelerated or not.

The only task I do where the apps aren't used full screen is if I'm doing janitorial work on my files. I would have several windows open on the filesystem, and drag-drop between them. Overlaps were eliminated by the simple precept of moving windows about. Granted, having a shortcut key to arrange/zoom windows would help but that's nothing that cannot be done in standard X.

Additionally, moving stuff between desktops is hardly a chore and a rare event - I use virtual desktops for different tasks. If something's not on the virtual desktop I'm using, it because it gets in the way or is part of a completely different task, e.g. games on a work desktop.

I frequently have my virtual desktops arranged by task, Internet, Work, Entertainment. Hence, the organisation of virtual desktops actually negates any need for transparency or some fancy 3D - I don't need to overlap windows if I can just throw them onto another, more relevant desktop. It also means that I can't be distracted while I'm working by stuff that shouldn't be on the screen at all.

Novell's XGL demo also demonstrates lot of other useless cruft - we won't even mention the bouncy windows or "snap to"... this stuff was done years ago and ignored because it's pure gimmick that's already working. It's the sort of stuff that appears in menus to games. Even there, it's only ever fun for the first minute and then you never dabble with it again.

Switching between virtual desktops as a cube - good metaphor but you could just as easily scrap it as an actual cube and just have four "sides" and still get work done without having to remember horrible keyboard combinations or have lots of OpenGL technology in place to be able to switch between desktops. It provides no advantage over much simpler, much less demanding methods.

Now it seems that the best bit of the XGL demos is, in fact, the hardware acceleration. Now that's a feature I won't knock unless it's for the fact that it only works on binary drivers at the moment. If they can resolve the driver issues and have hardware accelerated graphics on a desktop, maybe we can finally catch up the 90's with the rest of the world's operating systems! (And that's not a bash at Linux/X. It's a bash at the driver manufacturers who are holding us in that horrible position).

Novell, it seems, has spent two years making a stretchy GUI. To quote their website:

"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."

I'm sure that bouncy windows and video over a cube are so going to increase our productivity and make X more useable. I'm sure having to manually install a binary-only driver is phenomenally easy for your average potential Linux end-user that they'll even be able to do it in a bouncy window while watching Harry Potter playing over the top of Ice Age 2. I'm sure that those two years of adding to the configuration options of X.org.conf is going to just have us all blatting out our code twice as fast.

"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. It is designed to integrate well with the composite extension and performs best when a compositing manager is running. 'Compiz' is the new OpenGL compositing manager from Novell and is the framework that enables the development of graphical plug-ins."

Let's get this straight - hardware acceleration is a good thing. I like to be able to run 3D apps as fast as possible. Rarely, however, does a working desktop require 3D acceleration. You might be a 3D designer all day long but your desktop really doesn't need it. If you have power to spare, a few bouncy windows would probably look lovely but otherwise all they've created is an add-on to window transparency, a feature most people have turned off or don't even notice that they can use.

Novell should have put their efforts into something a bit more practical. An OpenGL compositing manager, I'm sure, has one, maybe two uses where it's absolutely indispensible. What would have been much more use would have been simplified X configuration options, maybe even on-the-fly configuration for most options, tighter integration with layers like HAL or even a single damn hardware accelerated open-source driver.

XGL is a gimmick. It may convince some eight-year-old sap somewhere that "Linux is better than Windows" but that's about it. Just wait until he's thrown into the world of having to seperately compile a kernel-specific driver every time he wants to try out the next kernel assuming, that is, that nVidia has supported it at all yet. XGL brings nothing new to the table, no work that people couldn't get done before can now get done. No time is saved, no money is saved, no problem has been solved. All it does is make my computer even damn slower just to show me a file listing.

No comments: