Compiz vs 3D-Desktop
 

After seeing the screenshots and videos of the 3D Window manager, I really wanted to try it out. Found a "HowTo" for Compiz but it recommends "upgrading" the distro to Dapper. I'm bleeding enough from my Linux learning experience and don't feel up to taking on a beta OS. I stumbled across 3D-Desktop, which looks like much the same functionality. Has anyone ever run either? Or both? Any thoughts or comments? More specifically, how easy is it to back out of if things go wrong?

Actually 3D-Desktop lets you change desktops that are presented in the faces of a 3D-cube. You have to start the daemon and refresh the content of the desktops. It's interesting, but I don't think you can do much with 3D-Desktop.

On the contrary, XGL is built on top of OpenGL and will be part of X.org 7.0. This means that in the near future we'll see tons of applications that will use this powerful tool. One of the first tools is Compiz. The videos and screenshots are breathtaking, IMHO ;). Unfortunately as you have mentioned it's in beta, don't think is wise to jump at this point. You have to be patient and wait until the release of Suse 10.1 (a month), Fedora Core 5 (two weeks), or Ubuntu Dapper (more than two months).

If you are so impatient (like me), you can try the Kororaa XGL Live CD that has XGL running quite stable in GNOME. Take a look at this review:

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/5476

You can try XGL without damaging your system.

These Live CDs are damn useful! :D

3DDesk - 1, Xgl - 0
 

I got to play around some tonight. You're right, the 3D-Desktop is actually pretty elementary. Its a very creative display of screen captures that let's you cycle through and select a virtual desktop.

Having said that, every Windows user I've shown this to has gasped in awe. Really, its not good for much else. But if you want a quick and easy way to impress the Windows users around - 3D-Desktop will do it.

I began the process of trying to install Compiz, but when it got to the dire warnings about it removing my karefully krafted kustom kernel - I aborted in fear. I think I'll take your advice and wait.

What about the Live CD?. This is a good option to play with XGL.

Xgl Demo Live CD
 

Awesome, absolutely awesome! I can't wait to get this on my machine. After months of distro hopping, I've settled on ubuntu - so it looks like mid-summer before I'll feel comfortable upgrading to Dapper. I'm looking forward to this.

I haven't had this much fun goofing around with my computers in years. I hardly even touch my Windows machines anymore. Moving them to dual boot is getting closer and closer to the top of my "to-do" list.

The live cd is definatly hot! It will give you a good way of determining how your system will handle it XGL...What i want to know is if XGL will work with say Fluxbox or E17...Ive been reading everything on the net about this thing, planning my upgrade on my Gentoo box, but I want it to work with fluxbox.

Oh Crap!
 

Apparently I didn't stop soon enough. I guess enough of Dapper came over that my system is - no more. The machine has become basically unbootable. It drops out into some sort of very limited emergency shell.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to recover from this? I'm not even interested in recovering the machine to its former state. I've installed ubuntu about 30 times now - 31 shouldn't be any problem. But there are a few files on there that I'd like to get off before I do.

I think I need some pointers on using a Rescue CD to boot, mount the logical volumes, mount an NFS share, and copying off what I want to save. I think that will work - but I don't know how.

You're right animehair, I played with XGL a lot these days. It's really impressive this is what I call a disruptive technology, it'll change the way we use our computers. Given the fact that will be part of X.org 7.0, and that it's free software, in the next months we'll start to see applications that we never dream possible. Compiz is really good, I became addicted to Alt+Tab, very very useful to change windows, and also F12 like expose in the Macs, amazing!!!. One thing that I was thinking after trying XGL is that you don't need the latest in hardware to run this, with a PC two years old (video card with 64 MB) I ran it without any problem of performance, you don't need to buy ANYTHING to have this in your PC, nice :D

Unfortunately, this is beta yet. In one of my PCs with an ATI driver didn't work :cry: but in another PC with an Nvidia driver it works perfectly!. Also it's used in GNOME, I haven't seen any screenshot with other desktop, probably SuSE 10.1 will use it in KDE also. As for Fluxbox, I think you have to wait, remember this is very new.

I'm sorry that you couldn't finish installing XGL, I read the Ubuntu tutorial and I think it's the distro that it's closer to have XGL running. At this point it works only with Nvidia drivers, if you have an ATI driver you have to make workarounds everywhere, not good. I tried to install it in my Gentoo System with no avail, I was following the Gentoo How-to but I couldn't emerge some packages. The fact that I have an Intel Em64 processor didn't cooperate also.

I think that your problem is linked with the upgrading of the X System, so if you can remove these packages and then reinstall X.org 6.8, probably you can recover your system. Of course you have to work from the console. Anyway if you want to reinstall your system, but first you want to backup some files, I suggest you to start a new thread, so you can have more advice on this.

Ok im smarter now (and it took me a while for it to click in my head). You got to break it down to get it, The effects will come from compiz, XGL is a completely different element (x server). To get the OpenGl run GUI you only just need XGL, but for the effects you need the window manager compiz. So to answer my previous question, i dont think compiz will work with fluxbox because they are BOTH window managers...Gnome KDE, and XFCE will work (with compiz for effects) by replacing the window manager (metacity, kwin) with compiz, of course its still in the early stages. So basically ive upgraded my system to the modular xorg, and installed XGL...and everything is great...i can wait for the effects to be implemented into the other window managers, but its just really cool to finally be processing the gui using my graphics card (after all these years wasting perfectly good resources)...so im appreciating this technology a ton more than just for the effects now.