X and Eye Candy

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org>
| 
| I've downloaded and booted a copy of the Kororaa distribution, and I highly
| recommend that others here have a look at this glimpse at the future of the
| open source desktop.

Thanks.

I had heard of this.  I was tempted, partly for the silly reason that
I was forced to buy a very high-end video card (nVidia 7800GTX) and
have had no use for what makes it so expensive: 3d performance.  In
particular, I'm using the open source driver that cannot touch all
those pipes and shaders and thingees.

(Why did I buy this card?  Because my monitor requires "dual link" DVI
to drive it.  The nVidia 7800GT was the cheapest nVidia card that
would do the job (I got a GTX instead for incidental reasons).  I had
tried an ATI x1300 at less than a third of the cost (and watts) but
there is no Linux driver for the ATI x1000 series cards.)

I have not as yet downloaded Kororaa because I haven't thought of any
actual benefit from the candy.  Desktops on the face of a cube sound
cute but not helpful (how does that work when my desktop isn't
square?).  But this is only based on thinking about the thing.

Evan: what does Koraraa do for you?  Why do you find it a worthwhile
experience?


Some things about x-over-GL have me concerned:

- the only decent 3d drivers for Linux are proprietary.  Even those
  don't actually work right with Xgl (maybe that has changed; see
  http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl and
  http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL#Prerequisites).  On the other hand,
  only certain middle-aged ATI cards work for AIGLX (see
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aiglx).

- (SuSE's) Xgl apparently precludes DRI applications

- (Red Hat's) aiglx seems to require the window manager to do the
  magic.  Perhaps only one window manager (Metacity) will be allowed.

I may have this wrong -- I've never tried any of these things.
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