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74 Comments
- beelz, on 10/12/2007, -12/+51bunch of cry babys.
- apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+34Yea not all of it very useful and is just eyecandy, however a couple of the features are handy. Like the zooming in a part of the desktop like he does towards the end of the video. Playing videos across multiple desktops, I hate that windows won't let you do that... its stupid actually. The liquid effect though... yea eyecandy. The peaking behind a maximized window sounds cool and could be useful I guess if you don't have multiple moitors like me :). Overall though I'm excited that the core GUI of linux is being redone. THAT is the key part here. Linux is beating Windows to something. And that is a faster, more advanced gui.
- jtrost, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18That makes you cry? Wow, I hope you never see a plastic bag blowing in the wind.
- arunforce, on 10/12/2007, -25/+41Some people are so hypocritical, they say they hate childish effects, and think computers should be straight forward, but they will go add some lame ass effects, such as this.
Big deal, you can play with your screen. That will be amusing, for about 10 minutes. - writerboyVSgod, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19The lack of attractive fonts on most Linux desktops is one of the things that makes everything look ugly and old. One of the main reasons I switched back to OSX from Ubuntu.
I know you can install all the fonts you want and assign them to what ever you want, but I couldn't figure it out technically nor legally for my work station. What fonts can you legally use without paying for that are the basics for Mac and Windows? Are things like Verdana and Georgia open? Charcoal, Geniva, Helvetica, TNR? - chiptinder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12why would someone negadigg this guy? he's expressing a legitimate concern. if he's wrong, then post a reply and tell him what he can do to have better looking (legal) fonts.
- zephc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13So... beautiful... should have... sent a poet...
- Securityguru, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14I never thought Linux had graphics capabilities similar to Window's Vista. Well this goes to show Vista has some serious competition after all.
- Peterh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Actually Matt, I think the wobble does have its uses... I have it set to replace the system bell so now instead of getting that irritating *bing* every time I hit backspace in an empty terminal, the window wobbles a little. Much less annoying.
- UberMattMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Compiz/Xgl actually has lower requirements for graphics power than Vista. Aero effects wont run on my computer (ATI Radeon 9250) but Xgl runs great with Kubuntu, even without the proprietary Ati drivers.
Anyone who thinks that these effects are useless haven't used them (except for the wobbly windows, that's just eye candy). There are a lot of little things that they don't show you that help a lot, like the window goes black and white when that program stop responding. - lordthor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9If it makes a few more Windows fanboys turned Linux lovers, so be it.
- Phatt138, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Arunforce - I think that some people like you are missing the point. Yes yes, very little of what was shown in the video will to anything to improve the almighty workflow. However, visuals make a difference, and our desktops have (especially on the Linux front, until recently) been falling behind for some time.
Just about anything that you 'need' a computer for could be handled by some DOS or *NIX apps, with minimal GUI, a monochrome screen, and a 286. Ya know, the whole glorified-calculator thing. In fact, without easy access to music, full-motion video, and bright colors to distract you, you'd probably be overwhlemingly productive - cause you'd want to get out from in front of the thing ASAP.
Eye-candy sells cars. TV's. F'ckin washing machines, for chris'sake. Hell, most people pick the music they listen to for its digestability, not its mathematical nuances. The lion's share of media payoff goes to movies that are entertaining but fail to inspire, or books that can be picked up and put down without having to think about what's actually happening. I'm not saying those are all Good Things (most of them are tragedies), but it's true, nonetheless.
In summation: so what if I want to enjoy my desktop's looks as well as its functionality? True, eyecandy won't improve your workflow - it may even hurt it. But I paid $500 for my video card, and I couldn't be more pleased to see some of my mundane activities pick up a new sheen. People aren't excited about stuff like this simply because it looks good, as you seem to think - they're excited because the desktop is finally coming into its own as a launchpad for all the other awesome abilities of modern computers. - phatsphere, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10sorry, but i don't see any sense in that. i can just imagine something like that when browsing through files, to get a better visual feeling and more information. but this does not increase productivity nor does it help in any way. but as often, eye candy stuff like that is was ppl like ;)
- lordthor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7If it's here, then obviouslty enough people thought it was good enough. Shut the hell up, you whiny punk. If you've already seen something, move on with yoru life, and don't ruin the experience for the rest of us.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you run Automatix, it installs a lot of the Windows fonts, Verdana included. I'm not a big fan of Bitstream Vera Sans, so it was a good thing for me.
- se1zure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4looks really neat, and has some user, but it doesn't do alot of good when all of your cpu is being gobbled up (and your video card) with flashy effects. I would personally rather have a computer thats less flashy, but much faster.
That said, I hope xgl continues this good work, and maybe work on some more practical things. - MindFlayer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6It is Kill Bill. From the first half of the animated scene about O-ren Ishii.
- radiofrequency, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Compiz is awesome. It's what Aero could have been, if Microsoft got its head out its ass.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, by default they take too long, and some of them are dumb. I reduced the animation time for the wobble and disabled it on things like menus, and it's a lot better now. I do like the cube sides for switching workspaces--it makes it easier on the eyes for transition.
- slithy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Use Sans Serif....it's what most of my fonts are set to and it looks great to me.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3From the negative comments I take it many are Microsoft trolls who just shat in their pants when they realized that Vista may not be the prettiest GUI in town :-)
- artbell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3A mod up for you for the "Contact" reference.
- greenamp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's neat and all but it would get old in about 10 minutes. For example, just look at how many Mac users have such a simple effect like dock maginification turned off.
- lqqkout4elfy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Again with the wobbly windows. If you think SLED is cool, try using yast for more than 5 minutes. You'll pull your hair out waiting your fonts to be updated EVERY @#$!@!@#'ing time when you're configuring your system. Yes, even if you're just changing your network settings... you'll be sitting there waiting for the stoopid thing update the fonts.
vim /etc/ FTW! - HCviolence, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9I loved the intense background music. I expected the video to turn into a ole western showdown.
- Jangles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5No matter what people come up with, you will always have people who will bitch and complain, or even worse, people like arunforce who bitches and complains about people bitching and complaining.
Half of that is just for show, but who cares? It's fun and that is what matters. You don't have to run it if you don't like it; but if you like that kind of stuff it is there for you.
ahhh variety. - kahrn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4So what exactly is the function other than to cause seizures..?
- mahler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The user-interface is a crucial part of productivity. The more fluent your tools react to your commands, the more comfortable you feel doing your job. With GL as your X Server, there are just more possibilities to make your tools react more natural, like in the real (3D) world.
- Rosco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I kind of like that IE7 skin for Firefox, where can I download that from?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's not just the poor fonts on Linux (which are admittedly horrendous for every-day use), but also how the fonts are displayed. Linux has severe problems with character spacing, so you often will see some letters in a word right on top of each other, and other letters seemingly having extra space between them. This hasn't been fixed in many years, and is one of the reasons I'm not switching to Linux yet.
When somebody ever posts a screenshot of their browser or word processor, I can instantly tell you if it's Linux or not just by how the fonts are displayed. - aaryn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That ***** was shat long ago, its been stinking up the place ever since Windows has been around. Remember the version of Windows with a half decent/nice looking GUI? Me neither
- ClassicJBC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Isn't that music actually from Once Upon a Time in the West?
- lqqkout4elfy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3http://beatnik.infogami.com/Gimmie is the next big thing in Gnome, this beats Microsoft's next big thing - more eye candy (incidently the same mistake made by Novell with this Compiz crap). I can only glean 1 or 2 features from that whole XGL junk that is actually useful.
- JorgeGT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's from Kill bill Vol.1 but it's from Luis Enrique Bacalov: "The Grand Duel (Parte Prima)"
- HaroldHupmobile, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It's something by Ennio Morricone, but I can't place it. Maybe one of the Kill Bill movies.
- Tom_Riddle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1LOL, everything is better than Vista. Vista offers nothing great... yet.
- nmap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think it's off by default on a new install, that's probably why.
- bj00rn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Good god... That was lame and bizarre (the music helped with the bizarre-ness) at the same time.
- simX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@mahler: I'm sorry, but nothing in the real world acts like those windows do. It's *gratuitous* eye-candy that serves no function at all. There's something to be said for eye-candy that is also functional, but not just eye-candy.
Take, for example, Mac OS X, that many like to ridicule because it supposedly has "gratuitous eye-candy". It actually doesn't. The genie-effect that takes 0.25 seconds to accomplish lets you know *where* your window went. When you double-click an application, its icon zooms at you to let you know that your action was registered. Sheets that "unfurl" from windows let you know to which window its attached. The "ripple" effect for Dashboard widgets lets you know, again, that your action had an effect. Yes, it's cool for the wow factor, but it also gives you almost subconscious clues about what's happening to the interface.
But the effects described in this video make no sense at all. What's the point in having a wobbly window? You can already see to where the window moved once you moved it -- the wobbly window gives you no extra useful information. The "blorp" of the window when it's maximized also gives you no extra information, because you can already see that it's maximized. What's the point of being able to drag between virtual desktops via a blorpy cube, when you can just click a button and have the cube automatically rotate to the next desktop for you? (That is, what's the point of making you click and drag to do the action -- is it worth it to be able to see parts of both virtual desktops at once for any period of time longer than 0.25 seconds?)
It seems that Linux interface designers still don't get it. - Dawnspire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yes, I dont know about you guys, but when I wave my fingers around squiggles and waves follow them in the air, and if I am looking for something under the bed I just rotate my entire room 90 degrees and stretch one corner of the bed in.
Very 'life-like' GUI. - foofightrs777, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Same for me. But I'm running on some slow hardware. (P4 2ghz Nvidia MX 440) I finally settled for xfwm4 window manager in gnome. Its a good combo of functionality, eyecandy, and speed.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Jaggy, non anti-aliased, just like I used to see in Linux years ago."
The next time you're using a Windows-based computer, open the Control Panel, double-click on Display, click the 'Appearance' tab on top, and click on the 'Effects' button. Now, put a checkmark next to: "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:" and select 'CLEARTYPE' from the drop-down menu underneath. You now have perfectly anti-aliased fonts everywhere.
Now that you're able to compare Windows fonts and Linux fonts when both are anti-aliased, you will immediately see exactly how Linux fonts and font rendering is inferior to Windows.
Hope this helps. :) - yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cry?
- RandomGuySteve, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I'm really getting fed up with the RSS selections for Digg. 2 XGL videos within 10 links of eachother, and this "TITLE" is absolute crap.
I don't care what makes it to the front page, but for the love of all that its holy could you shape up on the RSS selections?
No Soccer, No Apple, No repeats. Please?
And get new captchas, these suck ass. - mallow005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2since Compiz utilizes the GPU, the CPU is actually less taxed than in traditional window managers. This allows the CPU to do other things, and allows your GPU to be taken advantage of (where previously the GPU did nothing on the desktop). Video accelerated desktops are the future.
(of course this doesn't apply to minimalist DE like flubox, but compared to KDE or GNOME, moving a window around takes less CPU power (for example)). - macewan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1akamaru is pretty damn cool too
- SourWorm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Well I do, now.
- tropicflite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I had installed, and like greenamp said I got sick of it in about 10 minutes and got rid of it. Some people love eye candy, but to me this is just a distraction. Plus, my 3D performance took a huge hit under Compiz/XGL.
- pussfeller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"replaced system bell with wobble window" : now that would be cool as hell
I get tired of tab-completing in konsole and the bell kinda piles up and blasts me 10 times. - pivo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Really? I think the fonts on Linux look much better than on Windows. Maybe it's my distribution (Fedora). I had to use a Windows machine recently, and I was shocked at the poor font rendering quality. Jaggy, non anti-aliased, just like I used to see in Linux years ago.
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