Happy GNU Year

I just got back from my annual vacation to my home town (New Orleans) where I was incredibly busy either looking at the destruction or fixing computers. My grandmother's house (she is ok) was only two blocks away from the largest levee breach, and the scene of destruction in her house and around her neighborhood was the exact opposite of "eye candy." After that experiance I was glad to come home and resume the fun hacking upon my Linux box again.

And the welcome party had exactly what I wanted for the Holidays- a new version of Xgl! This is the coolest code release in the eye candy world of Linux for a while. When Aaron Siego of KDE originally complained about the closed nature of Xgl my greatest hope is that it would lead to the release of the Xgl code. The Xgl (in case you do not know) is a dependent ( as in it needs the old xserver to help it) server that will allow the Linux desktop to use Opengl to (eventually) draw the desktop using 3D hardware. Eventually it could get to the point that the Xgl has a later independent version that can draw the entire desktop using the 3D hardware of modern graphics cards. This will make it all faster and will lead to pretty effects like OSX has and Vista will have.

And now upon my return I find that my wishes were granted and David Reveman has released the newest code.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-January/011922.html

And what code it is. Listen to the changes:

"Compared to the xserver module code in freedesktop CVS a lot have
changed. The new code contains an uncounted number of bug fixes, some
major restructuring and a few additional features."

Sounds tasty. I have tried for hours and I cannot get it to compile yet, but I'm sure that after its soon merged with the CVS then most distro will have packages of it (Dapper already has an older Xgl in the repos so its not a big deal for Daniel Stone to upgrade it). I will keep trying and I really want to try it with all the composite manager.

But no matter what this is a big deal. This is the future. The reward of a modular Xorg.

Of course, its not ready yet. And its not the end solution. But this is a HUGE jump and the first real positive news on the Xgl in a long time.

Now I know some people are saying "show me the money" so here is all the Xgl goodies I can find. Here is a GREAT video of it:

http://soijabanaani.net/tmp/glxcompmgr_effects.mpeg.torrent

And an older video:

http://rapidshare.de/files/4553011/xgl_wanking.avi.html

And here is a few screenshots of Xgl in action:

http://www.cs.umu.se/~c99drn/pics/xgl-001.png

http://www.cs.umu.se/~c99drn/xgl/xgl-shot3.png

http://www.cs.umu.se/~c99drn/xgl/xgl-shot2.png

http://www.cs.umu.se/~c99drn/xgl/xgl-shot1.png

Its Amazing Stuff. Hope to have my own screenshots soon.