Vista / Aqua, eat my shorts

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2007-01-23 03:50am

Makes you look bad

To bad I know nothing about Linux, that looks sooo nice!

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2007-01-23 04:01am

It's times like this that I just love Gentoo...

$ sudo emerge -a beryl
Password:

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild N ] x11-wm/beryl-core-0.1.4 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-apps/xlsclients-1.0.1 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-apps/xvinfo-1.0.1 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-wm/emerald-0.1.4 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-plugins/beryl-plugins-0.1.4 USE="dbus -debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-misc/beryl-manager-0.1.4 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-misc/beryl-settings-0.1.4 USE="-debug"
[ebuild N ] x11-wm/beryl-0.1.4
[ebuild N ] x11-plugins/beryl-dbus-0.1.4
[ebuild N ] x11-themes/emerald-themes-0.1.4

Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No] yes

>>> Emerging (1 of 10) x11-wm/beryl-core-0.1.4 to /
>>> Downloading

etc.

And when I wake up in the morning, I'll have a fresh-from-the-oven build of Beryl to try out...

rhoenix · Post by **rhoenix** » 2007-01-23 04:03am

That's excellent. It makes me almost miss my old Gentoo box.

I've heard and seen that e17 is spectacular, as well.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2007-01-23 04:08am

Pretty...

Installation instructions.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-01-23 07:05am

Heh, been using it on Ubuntu ever since I got my 7600GT in December. Using compiz though- Beryl is too flaky for my tastes. Compiz is missing the transparent cube beryl has though

. Other than that, has the features I care about.

Video cap: http://feck.ath.cx:8080/~john/test.avi

It should run well on Intel integrated chips and nVidia cards > Geforce 2 (Less than the Geforce 2 can use XGL, but then you can't run anything else 3D (or maybe you can w/ nVida?))

I tried it on a PCI Radeon 9200 w/ open source drivers but scrolling among other things was too slow. Speed is somewhat acceptable on the X300 laptop, still sluggish- proprietary drivers are faster, but you have to run XGL, For ATI it's compatible w/ r200-r400 chips (need the proprietary drivers for anything X1000 series).

Ubuntu instructions: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=272104

Gentoo takes too long to compile

(plus I don't like vanilla versions of stuff, I like distro patches).

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2007-01-23 09:23am

Oooh, now I have a project for this weekend! Which one do you think would run better on a GeForce 3?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-01-23 09:41am

This one I believe: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=263851

EDIT: Er, this one http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=263840 for compiz - the above is for Beryl which I consider a little flaky- your results may vary.

I didn't really follow it, since I have a custom kernel to speed up my booting (I dual boot), plus I patched it so it would report the correct CPU frequency in /proc/cpuinfo since my CPU is overclocked, so precompiled modules don't work for me.

I find it amusingly annoying and ironic that I lack a windows key- need it for the keyboard shortcuts for various effects and utilities (I have the 1999 Model M w/ the builtin trackpoint).

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-01-23 09:44am

Looks sexy, but it also looks like a serious resource hog.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-01-23 10:09am

Yeah, seems to use 44% of the CPU on one core, and I have a core 2 duo overclocked to 3.2GHz. I don't really notice any performance impact (as in responsiveness) on my Geforce 7 though- it feels slow on the 1.73GHz laptop w/ the X300, but the drivers are also crappy for that too (although on this, CPU usage is lower). Doesn't really matter- you can just right click the tray icon to turn it off/on.

Videos seem kind of jerky since the capture software sucks.

Hrm, window resizing does seem slightly slower- maybe I'm conditioned to it since I've been using slow computers for so long (just got this new machine in September after using a PIII-550 for so long...). Curiously maximizing/minimizing/closing is fast...

EnsGabe · Post by **EnsGabe** » 2007-01-23 12:06pm

Pu-239 wrote:Yeah, seems to use 44% of the CPU on one core, and I have a core 2 duo overclocked to 3.2GHz. I don't really notice any performance impact (as in responsiveness) on my Geforce 7 though- it feels slow on the 1.73GHz laptop w/ the X300, but the drivers are also crappy for that too (although on this, CPU usage is lower). Doesn't really matter- you can just right click the tray icon to turn it off/on.

There's something wrong with your setup if beryl/compiz are using up a significant amount of processing power- I've got an Athlon 3000+ and an Geforce 4200 and Xorg/beryl barely register as blips as far as cpu usage goes.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-01-23 12:25pm

This is old. I was playing with variations on AIGLX/XGL and Compiz last year. It's nice, but I await better performance when I get a new GPU. A lot of the bells and whistles are totally redundant, but it was funny showing it off to a mate who's main reason for waiting for Vista was for the GUI.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-01-23 12:41pm

EnsGabe wrote:
Pu-239 wrote:Yeah, seems to use 44% of the CPU on one core, and I have a core 2 duo overclocked to 3.2GHz. I don't really notice any performance impact (as in responsiveness) on my Geforce 7 though- it feels slow on the 1.73GHz laptop w/ the X300, but the drivers are also crappy for that too (although on this, CPU usage is lower). Doesn't really matter- you can just right click the tray icon to turn it off/on.
There's something wrong with your setup if beryl/compiz are using up a significant amount of processing power- I've got an Athlon 3000+ and an Geforce 4200 and Xorg/beryl barely register as blips as far as cpu usage goes.

I am using compiz instead of beryl though, that might have something to do w/ it (unlikely). And are you actually doing anything? That said, maybe I do need to look at my xorg more closely- haven't really since I have so much CPU horsepower to waste....

EDIT: Ah, I looked back at the options being passed to compiz- the --indirect-rendering slows it down on nVidia cards or something- don't recall it being there before (and don't also recall high CPU usage until I checked today either).

Admiral Valdemar wrote:This is old. I was playing with variations on AIGLX/XGL and Compiz last year. It's nice, but I await better performance when I get a new GPU. A lot of the bells and whistles are totally redundant, but it was funny showing it off to a mate who's main reason for waiting for Vista was for the GUI.

Yeah, I was playing w/ XGL last year, but it was too unstable and 3d apps wouldn't run under XGL. nVidia drivers finally support running this stuff under AIGLX (well, technically it isn't, nVidia has their own implementation, but it runs directly w/o the XGL server) and I finally got the hardware to run it at adequate speeds this December.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-01-23 02:30pm

I personally haven't yet tried the flashy 3d effects, as I don't yet have a computer with Linux installed that would support them (I'm either running Linux on old hardware that isn't supported, or in VMs on newer systems, where it might work, but it would be slow as mollasses). I'm about to start seriously decommissioning my Windows XP installs, so I'm really looking forward to getting these effects.

To bad I know nothing about Linux, that looks sooo nice!

Time to start learning.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2007-01-23 04:26pm

Yeah, this makes Mac OS X v10.1 look positively awful.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2007-01-23 05:13pm

RThurmont wrote:
To bad I know nothing about Linux, that looks sooo nice!
Time to start learning.

No time and no intrest, windows works good enough for me needs.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-01-23 05:16pm

Sarcasm?

Well, from what I can gather from the features of MacOS versions on wikipedia, it does do compositing and the expose ripoff, so maybe 10.3 in terms of graphics.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-01-23 06:07pm

Eh, the effects are neat but a lot of it is just useless eye candy.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2007-01-23 06:12pm

Novel, but I'll wager the novelty wears off real fast. I got bored of the video after a minute.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-01-23 06:44pm

phongn wrote:Eh, the effects are neat but a lot of it is just useless eye candy.

This is what I thought when I watched that video. Wow, a whole bunch of meaningless flashy nonsense.

Then again, most people I know who use OSX think much of *that* 3d-enhanced stuff is meaningless flash, and it's far more restrained than 'rivers of sparklies woo'.

How much of it is anyone actually going to use, when people turn off the 'blue start bar' of XP and the 'slurpy windows' of OSX?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-01-23 06:57pm

I'm using Aero Glass on Vista and while there are shiny effects, those effects are generally unintrusive (the same goes with Aqua on OS X). That Beryl video reeks of "look at us! aren't we special - bet you Vista and OS X can't do this!!!!"

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-01-23 07:33pm

phongn wrote:I'm using Aero Glass on Vista and while there are shiny effects, those effects are generally unintrusive (the same goes with Aqua on OS X). That Beryl video reeks of "look at us! aren't we special - bet you Vista and OS X can't do this!!!!"

Holy shit! A promotional tech demo showing off! Quickly, my friend, find the leanest, fastest steed and alert the townsfolk at once, post haste!

Or, given I've actually used such technology for months, it is useful, when you don't want to masturbate in front of those poor Microsoft and Apple losers and say "Lookit? Fuck you and your lame GUI. Mine has a magical cube with fucking OpenGL!"

That, and unlike Vista, there's no insidious plot with the GPU and RAM manufacturers to get you to blow your Xmas bonus on a whole new PC just to see the window behind you through a transparent bloody window bar. Avalon could do that, for fuck's sake.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-01-23 07:47pm

Erm, OSX is hardware accelerated and I'd guess Aero is too. So 'has OpenGL' isn't really a big deal.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-01-23 07:55pm

Stark wrote:Erm, OSX is hardware accelerated and I'd guess Aero is too. So 'has OpenGL' isn't really a big deal.

No shit, just like this whole thread then, really.

I should stop watching Charlie Brooker before posting. Think I'll go eat a baby now and be done with it.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2007-01-23 08:01pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Holy shit! A promotional tech demo showing off! Quickly, my friend, find the leanest, fastest steed and alert the townsfolk at once, post haste!

The designers at Apple apply effects in a more or less restrained fashion and to make them functional. Vista goes to town with transparency and shaders to the point where you can barely read the title of a window if it's against a certain background. I'm seeing the same kinds of issues with Beryl. The Linux community is now basically saying "ME TOO!!!" after so many years of "Whatever, OS X and Vista are just useless GUI fluff."

Steve Jobs has said on numerous occasions that the geek crowd makes the erroneous assumption that design is "what it looks like" rather than "how it works". That's why Vista looks gaudy and Beryl looks superfluous, but OS X just looks nice. That's why the iPod sells, and your favorite iPod killer doesn't.

]Or, given I've actually used such technology for months, it is useful, when you don't want to masturbate in front of those poor Microsoft and Apple losers and say "Lookit? Fuck you and your lame GUI. Mine has a magical cube with fucking OpenGL!"

Wow, that makes it on par with Mac OS X circa 2004. Welcome to 3 years ago.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2007-01-23 08:12pm

Pu-239 wrote:Sarcasm?

Well, from what I can gather from the features of MacOS versions on wikipedia, it does do compositing and the expose ripoff, so maybe 10.3 in terms of graphics.

In 10.2, the GPU was added to the compositing path. That made things like shadows, transparency, etc ... all possible in real-time. Note that the actual drawing of the GUI widgets is not done by the GPU in Tiger unless you turn on QuartzGL in the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools. QuartzGL will actually put the GPU in the drawing path. But in Tiger, it's a recipe for kernel panics and weird drawing issues.

So as it stands right now, every window in Mac OS X is a 2-D rectangle with a texture on it. That texture is created and laid out by the CPU.