And again, XGL

Golem had it first today, osnews followed quite soon: Novell published some more of their Xgl source code, and provide it to the public. The’ve made up a small webpage about this release where you can download some nice videos, which show the new abilities which willb e probably shipped together with the new Linux Distribution NLD 10 (btw.: check the file sizes, the ogg files are as half as big as the mpeg streams – theora rules 🙂 ).

It is very, very nice to see this stuff happening, and that the Linux desktop gains more and more power – linux will be ready in case of such stuff when Windows Vista will be released.

One thing about the news pages: if you speak german, you should subscribe to golem – although heise.de is normally the first source of information they provide a lot more of information, interviews and in-depth-views around topics like KDE, X.Org and linux development all overall. They had much more stories, hosted movies, made interviews and everything than heise.de or any other source I know.

But back to topic: If you have a closer look at the posting at osnews, you will see some links to postings which describe a little bit why Novell decided to release this developments at a whole, and not in parts. The explanations are wort reading: even if you do not agree with them, they give you a better understanding why Novell behaved like this, and what their position is from where they are acting.

Besides that, it gives you a glimpse how the world can work when there are more and more companies joining in the linux development: we get more code, more development, but also more done inside of companies. I think the task for the community will be to show all these companies again annd again and again that they are not allowed to split and fork as they want, because that will just draw linux and all the open source software apart.
So, lot to do for us if I’m right 😉

X.Org – this time with videos

Linux Edge linked some videos from novell, showing a preview to their new Novell Linux Desktop 10 – it’s pretty amazing, and worth a look, although everything used there has already been shown (wobbling windows, transparent windows, cubic window changes etc.).

I’m looking forward how fast these new improvements will find there way into other Linux distributions – but I also have to admit that I’m a little bit worried if KDE get’s all these new improvements, too. I have the very strong feeling that all the big, fast developing, highly interesting distributions now using Gnome, and that KDE is more treated as a orphan. I would like to see some more obvious work their from other distributions. Sure, the Ubuntu project has promised to draw it’s focus much more on KDE, but there is not to much to see about this at the moment.

But anyway, the KDE-people will find their way – and even if they fall back now a little bit because of not enough support, we can hope that KOffice will drag back some people, because it will be nicer, faster and better working as OpenOffice 😉

A little bit X future…

Although it’s pretty old, I would like to link to a flash-presentation of novells brainshare: the quite long, but shows some of the xgl-improvements they made in the last months.

But keep in mind: novell came up with a development modell which lead to some problems: they kept everyone out of development, and tried to develop behind closed doors, and that’s nothing which has helped the Free Software movement at any time.

But the situation has changed a little bit, novell showed up the code and opened up the development after several developers pointed at the situation and after the media started to draw a not-nice picture of novell.

So, if you want to have a look at the possibilities of the X.Org-Server of the next geenration (or, at X of the next generation, I have no idea when they will implement what), look here. The interesting part begins somewhere at 1 h 17 m. Before that there is although something nice: some mono apps are shown, and some other novell stuff – all over all nothing really new, but nice to see.

Especially because we will see some of this mono stuff in Fedora Core 🙂

Was X vielleicht bald kann

Seit geraumer Zeit ärgert mich, dass mit meinem hübschen, neuen Laptop das Wechseln zwischen einem angeschlossenen Bildschirm und dem Monitorbildschirm nicht so recht klappen will. Das so genannte “Toggeln” will nicht – und das, obwohl die ATI-Treiber offiziell Unterstützung dafür gewähren.

Während ich mich zur Zeit also nur mit der Hoffnung zufrieden geben muss, dass solche und andere kleinere Probleme des Linux-Alltags irgendwann mal der Vergangenheit angehören werden, und z.B. auch neue Mauszeiger-Designs ausgewählt werden können, ohne X neu zu starten, so tauchen am Horizont doch die Früchte der zunehmenden Verbreitung von Linux auf – immer mehr Leute beschäftigen sich damit, und so fließen immer mehr Ideen auch in die einzelnen Komponenten.

Ein aktuelles Beispiel sind verschiedene Versuche, die den X-Server in Zukunft interessanter und leistungsfähiger gestalten sollen. Eine nette Vorstellung der Features samt einigen Screenshots und 5 Videos findet sich in einem Artkel bei Golem.

Wenn auch viele Sachen davon Spielerei sind, so zeigen sie doch, wie leistungsfähig X sein kann, und was bald alles möglich sein kann.
Und sie zeigen, dass Open Source auch in Sachen Grafik und graphischen Kleinigkeiten zum Überholen ansetzt, womit wieder eine Bastion fällt, die zur Zeit noch mehrheitlich in der Hand proprietärer Anbieter ist…

Viel Spaß beim Angucken 🙂