David Reveman's Response

Many have been asking what hardware XGL and Compiz would need, so I thought I would ask David Reveman myslef. Below are my question and his response.

"Hello Mr. Reveman

I am a big fan of your work who has followed the progress of your many
OSS projects for a long time. I am VERY impressed with your recent XGL
code and I have to admit that it was six months ahead of what I
thought to be possible in such a time frame. Amazing
work- thanks for your progress!

Yet the recent code drop has ignited the same questions all over Linux
forums. Instead of speculation I wanted to ask you so I could get the
answer directly from the person who would know best. I promise if you
answer my questions I will use my popular Linux eye candy blog, Digg,
and other forms of communication to get the message out so everyone
will know.

What do YOU recommend for running XGL now and in the future in the
graphics card department? How much video RAM is enough? Do the very
popular (due to their open source drivers) ATI r200 (say.....a 9000 or
so) series cards and Intel Integrated graphics cards have enough
horsepower to use XGL in the long term? On the other side of the fence
there is a big deal about "directx9 cards" vs "directx8 cards" with
the latter being not good enough for the future. Are Directx 8 cards
up to the task of the nice XGL effects?

Thank you in advance for you time, and thank you for the most
excellent work you have done so far. You have many big fans in the
Linux community so please know that if nothing else you are getting
plenty of recognition and respect for your work. Good luck in the
future.

Jonathan Smith"


Here is the response.

"I don't know exactly what hardware that will be needed to run Xgl and
compiz. It's design so that it should run OK on old hardware but still
allow you to get the most out of the latest graphics cards. So if you
want the most out of it, you should get one of the newest cards.
However, it should eventually be very usable on r200 hardware and Intels
latest integrated chipsets, almost all the effects should work OK on
this kind of hardware as well, the drivers just need some attention
first.

-David"