<DISCLAMER>

This is for *nix users only. If you are not running X, or you don't know what X is, then get out of this thread, do some research, and once you have a full grasp of *nix and X, then you may come back. If you post any stupid questions in this thread, I will request an admin to delete it. This thread will NOT degrade into n00b territory. You were warned.

</DISCLAMER>

Wow, I just tried out XGL + Compiz, and... wow... just wow...

XGL is a new X window system with full OpenGL acceleration created over at Novell. Much like Aero's interface is fully OpenGL, so is XGL. Compiz is then a replacement WM (demonstrations often have it replacing Metacity) It is currently in beta, with no real "releases" per se, but it is in the Ubuntu apt repository, so it is mostly stable.

It has all the new features you could want. Opacity, window rearranging w/ no overlaps, live alt-tab previews, video acceleration, etc... You can even map your virtual desktops to a cube, and then rotate the cube w/ everything running just fine (eg, videos keep playing, games keep going, etc) Windows can even overlap between virtual desktops with no problems

I highly recommend you try it out (it won't screw with Xorg, and I have had no problem running the two side by side - you can even do one in DISPLAY=:0 and one in DISPLAY=:1 simultaneously, or in a window on regular X) Only real downside is that nVidia doesn't have driver support for it, so its a tad slow (not sure if ATi does or not, but I don't think it does) For reference glxgears drops from 15,000 in X to 5,000 in XGL - not terribly bad, but no direct rendering either.

I suggest you at least check out some of the example videos: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL/Weblinks (This is my fav so far: http://www.freedesktop.org/~davidr/xgl-demo1.xvid.avi )

Gentoo-WIki should provide some good info as to getting it up and running, although obviously you should consult a distro-specific guide if you want to try it: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL

I have a prog that does that (although that's all it does) (hehe F5: Desktop F6: censored )

I have heard good things about this; I'll try it out this weekend.

If its an X program it would either be very slow, or not be the same as the XGL one (with the XGL one the virtual desktops are still "live", eg, videos keep playing, opengl keeps running, etc.. on all visible virtual desktops)

What program is that, though? I'm curious to check it out... (even though I don't use virtual desktops anyway, lol, thats what dual monitors are for )

I saw a video of this on a 30" monitor somewhere on Metacafe or Youtube and it was extremely impressive. I'd love if someone ported this to a third-party shell for Vista.

Hmm...3ddesktop

o.0 Vista's Aero interface is ALREADY hardware accelerated, its just DirectX instead of OpenGL....

hmm, I am assuming though this would take some kick-a system to run (as in my Athalon 1200 would complain about it).

Rivereye: Its not your CPU that renders it, but rather your video card. Thats the entire point of OpenGL or DirectX powered GUIs, to offload some of the work to the video card (which is usually left doing absolutely nothing)

You can always try it and see (even if its not really usable or real slow, it is pretty cool to actual use, if just to play around with for 20min or so, before switching back to X)

EDIT: Incase you are curious, here is it running on my Gnome system (its running in vt8 with a reg X in vt7)

http://www.kllrnohj.com/images/Xgl+Compiz/glxgears.png - you can see how the FPS of glxgears starts good (12,000) but drop rapidly as I lower opacity and stretch the window (2,000-3,000) I blame the X in vt7 along with no nvidia driver direct rendering in Xgl

http://www.kllrnohj.com/images/Xgl+Compiz/mplayer_glxgears.png - just shows mplayer and glxgears running overlapped with lowered opacity - i couldn't get a good screenshot of the "elastic" window dragging, unfortunately

ok, if it would be the GPU, I use the MX4000 graphics card.

...Which will probably be pretty slow for this, lol. Look at my screenshots, those glxgear FPSes were from a 7900GT, a *bit* higher than your MX4000. Still worth trying, just to see what the future will hold. I plan on installing it on my older XP 2500 and 9700Pro and seeing how it handles it.

For reference, I get around 15,000 FPS in glxgears from reg ol' X (while I know glxgears is far from a reliable benchmark, it should give you a rough idea of the performance to expect)

That's why he keeps track of me...
Seriously, trying to get XGL/Compiz to work.... Gentoo, AMD64, ATI...

So far, all I've managed to do is get compiz to crash XGL and X

Wow, those screenies are very impressive . (I see somebody reads my blog as well, judging by a certain mp3 on your desktop )

Yes, and I hate you for it. Stupid song has been stuck in my head for 7 hours now! Oh, and make sure you check out one of the videos of Xgl+Compiz in action - very impressive (Heh, I'm having so much fun just dragging a window around the screen at differnent points )

@Proegssilb: Follow the gentoo-wiki and use the compiz-quinnstorm one (and -plugin, of course) - then use 'csm' to configure it. You also need dbus installed

I know, but just as Blackbox is an alternate shell, this could be worked into an alternate shell.

*ahem* The proper term is "Window Manager"

I am... Trick is, I get the "non power of two textures" problem... Either I'm using the wrong ati-drivers, or not one person with the official ATI drivers can run compiz-quinnstorm.
Or I'm not looking in the right place. Still working at it...

Bah, screw porting compiz to Vista. Why can't linux just have something way cooler than any other system?

@Proegssilb: Try using the "unstable" ati-driver

Uh, no...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager says that that's only a valid term for X....

OK, yeah, that did it... Someone can hurt me later for not thinking of that....
Got everything to work in windowed mode.

That very same link says that Blackbox IS a window manager (okay, so maybe the term is an X Window Manager...)