XGL vs Aero Glass

[drag]

Moving windows is still a little buggy.. but if you hold alt and click anywhere on the window, you should be able to move it.

That's window manager stuff. That's the common convention, but different windows managers can have different behaviors and often what happens when you alt-click something can be customizable.

Don't get mixed up with the 'XGL' stuff. Remember that Linux tends to be much more modular...

XGL would be the core of the 3d accelerated desktop..
XGLX is Novell's 'XGL'.
AIGLX is Redhat's version.

Those just provide 3d accelerated rendering capabilities and compisition.

This compisition stuff is what is new with 'XGL' and such.. At least being fast and usable, that is.

You have a compisition manaqer, which is fairly new, and then you have a Window manager. It seems that the direction people are going are combining both the window manager and compisition manager into one thing.

The compisition management is were you get all your special effects from.. The cubed desktop, the wobbly windows, the fancy window switching, etc etc. XGL is required to provide the acceleration to make it smooth, but the compisition manager is what controls it.

So remember that all this stuff is ment to be interchangable like lego bricks..

For instance you have 2 opengl based window/compisition managers..

Metacity is the default window manager for Gnome. It's been extended to include compisition management, and this is generally what you use with AIGLX and is the gnome default.

Compiz is a compisition manager from Novell that is being extended to include window manager features. It's from Novell and it is what you use on their version of 'XGL' (called xglx by redhat to differentiate)

However people do use Compiz on AIGLX...

The current advantage to AIGLX is that it is included by default with X.org 7.1. This is nice, were as with XGLx is is more like a propriatory add-on (although it is still perfectly Free software mind you).

Ubuntu dapper has packages for XGL, I beleive.. As does obviously Suse 10.1 and such. With AIGLX Fedora Core 5 currently has it as will any distro that is running X.org 7.1.

The downside to both of these accelerated X servers is that they still require the legacy X server in order to function. This makes them more complex then they ultimately need to be.

They are suppose to both end up being replaced by Xegl, which is the 'next generation' X server currently in development. Probably won't see it for another year or year and a half, I suppose. AIGLX and XGLX are kinda nessicary steps on the evolution of X.

 

[silverpig]

I had xgl working great in gentoo, but the xorg guys changed an ABI revision requirement or something, and now it rejects all current ati and nvidia hardware drivers.

 

[drag]

If your using a r300 to r420 or r480 ATI card you can get good open source drivers working with them. (basicly mostly agp and PCI cards newer then the ATI 9200 stuff and older then the X1k stuff).

It's the r300_dri drivers. You may have to manually compile them from CVS though to get the best results.

I had a x800 ati card that worked very well with them, until the card overheated and crapped out due to a loose heatsink.

The open source drivers aren't as fast as the propriatory ones with 3d stuff, but actually are a bit faster with 2d. The EXA works well, at least from cvs.

I didn't get a chance to try AIGLX or XGLX with it though.

I haven't tried it with my GMA 950 card either, although I will probably play around with it this weekend.

 

[gsellis]

I cannot speak for XGL. But remember that Aero is not just about a pretty 3D UI. It is about dynamic fonts so that scaling recreates the font instead of just makes it larger and introduces aliasing. That is part of the whole engine re-write. The graphics move back to User mode, where they belong (crashes become recoverable). The GPU gains management including VM (XP is first in, wins). This also makes the physics engine using the GPU do-able. It also means that I can load a game, swap out to edit video, swap to animate, then swap back to the game. Can't do that currently without issues cropping up.

Just in fonts along, what I have seen is freaking amazing. I have seen (in 2003 even!) Longhorn running at 240dpi (still don't think that monitor is for sale). The text on screen was print quality and zooming into a word did not introduce aliasing or lose resolution.

I don't know about you, but I still print stuff to read as on my monitor. Text on my monitor still has that 'halo' from fonts being at around 96-120dpi with aliasing.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: gsellis
I cannot speak for XGL. But remember that Aero is not just about a pretty 3D UI. It is about dynamic fonts so that scaling recreates the font instead of just makes it larger and introduces aliasing. That is part of the whole engine re-write. The graphics move back to User mode, where they belong (crashes become recoverable). The GPU gains management including VM (XP is first in, wins). This also makes the physics engine using the GPU do-able. It also means that I can load a game, swap out to edit video, swap to animate, then swap back to the game. Can't do that currently without issues cropping up.

Just in fonts along, what I have seen is freaking amazing. I have seen (in 2003 even!) Longhorn running at 240dpi (still don't think that monitor is for sale). The text on screen was print quality and zooming into a word did not introduce aliasing or lose resolution.

I don't know about you, but I still print stuff to read as on my monitor. Text on my monitor still has that 'halo' from fonts being at around 96-120dpi with aliasing.

Microsoft is removing the graphics from the kernel and putting them in userland?

 

[Robor]

Ugh, after working with XGL for a day and night I want to change my vote. Aero > XGL and I've used both on this laptop.

XGL is *SLOW*, unstable, and buggy as hell. With only Thunderbird and Gaim open and the system sitting idle I get random reboots. Just moving windows around causes the (sucky & annoying) popup program switcher to disappear rendering the system useless. And the 'wobble' feature is just plain stupid - how was that a good idea? This experiment was an absolute waste of time. Now I just want to figure out how to revert back to Gnome/Metacity.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Microsoft is removing the graphics from the kernel and putting them in userland?

Yes, they saw the error of their ways. They realized that OS stability was dependent on 3rd party developers. The WHQL/OCA (Online Crash Analysis) stats have been a force for good. That is also why Vista has a memory check built into the installer/recovery boot too. MS was able to attribute a significant portion of certain types of 'unknown' errors to memory issues.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Robor
Ugh, after working with XGL for a day and night I want to change my vote. Aero > XGL and I've used both on this laptop.

XGL is *SLOW*, unstable, and buggy as hell. With only Thunderbird and Gaim open and the system sitting idle I get random reboots. Just moving windows around causes the (sucky & annoying) popup program switcher to disappear rendering the system useless. And the 'wobble' feature is just plain stupid - how was that a good idea? This experiment was an absolute waste of time. Now I just want to figure out how to revert back to Gnome/Metacity.

:| :| :| :| :| :| :| :|

Can you tell I'm having fun right now?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Microsoft is removing the graphics from the kernel and putting them in userland?

Yes, they saw the error of their ways. They realized that OS stability was dependent on 3rd party developers. The WHQL/OCA (Online Crash Analysis) stats have been a force for good. That is also why Vista has a memory check built into the installer/recovery boot too. MS was able to attribute a significant portion of certain types of 'unknown' errors to memory issues.

I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea these days, depending on how it's done... Link.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Robor
Ugh, after working with XGL for a day and night I want to change my vote. Aero > XGL and I've used both on this laptop.

XGL is *SLOW*, unstable, and buggy as hell. With only Thunderbird and Gaim open and the system sitting idle I get random reboots. Just moving windows around causes the (sucky & annoying) popup program switcher to disappear rendering the system useless. And the 'wobble' feature is just plain stupid - how was that a good idea? This experiment was an absolute waste of time. Now I just want to figure out how to revert back to Gnome/Metacity.

:| :| :| :| :| :| :| :|

Can you tell I'm having fun right now?

All back working normal and stable again.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea these days, depending on how it's done... Link.

Not sure that would make it vulnerable running at R3. I think audio and other devices already do run at R3. Of course, it is a new kernel and there are totally new ways to mess it up.

 

[ForumMaster]

xgl for the win. you don't need the resources that Aero takes to have a good looking desktop.

 

[spikespiegal]

Microsoft is removing the graphics from the kernel and putting them in userland?

Cool. Back we go to NT 3.51

(personally I've never liked the idea of graphics being at Ring-0 anyways)

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: silverpig
I had xgl working great in gentoo, but the xorg guys changed an ABI revision requirement or something, and now it rejects all current ati and nvidia hardware drivers.

nvidia drivers work in the new xorg. Gentoo masks them because the abi changed and it 'could' cause problems for 'some' users.

copy the nvida-glx and xorg-server ebuilds to your overlay and then edit the ebuilds and make these changes.

If you dont know you setup your overlay in your make.conf

add this to your make.conf
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"

then make sure the /usr/local/portage directory exists.

When you copy over the ebuilds it should look like this

/usr/local/portage/x11-base/xorg-server/xorg-server-1.1.0-r1.ebuild
and
/usr/local/portage/media-video/nvidia-glx/nvidia-glx-1.0.8762.ebuild

In xorg-server-1.1.0-r1.ebuild:
replace this line (should be on or near line 147
!media-video/nvidia-glx
with this linke
media-video/nvidia-glx

Then, in nvidia-glx-1.0.8762.ebuild
replace this line (on or near line 27)
!>=x11-base/xorg-server-1.0.99
with
>=x11-base/xorg-server-1.0.99

Then after you do this, you need to run ebuild to setup these ebuilds in your overlay.

My overlay is /usr/local/portage

so I run this command

ebuild /usr/local/portage/x11-base/xorg-server/xorg-server-1.1.0-r1.ebuild digest

and then I run
ebuild /usr/local/portage/media-video/nvida-glx/nvidia-glx-1.0.8762.ebuild digest

Finally I can now just emerge nvida-glx.

Then I can follow the normal nvidia setup (change your opengl, modify xorg.conf)

This works perfect on my box in both 32bit and 64bit gentoo. Xorg will put a message in your console that it is using an outdated abi.

You shouldnt' need to recompile xorg-server. If an updated version fo xorg-server shows up (lets say xorg-server-1.1.0-r2.ebuild will need to copy this ebuild over to usr/local/portage/ copy over the files folder found in /usr/portage/x11-base/xorg-server/files and then run the ebuild digest commands again on xorg-server. You could also just stop x from being updated by placing
>x11-base/xorg-server-1.1.0-r1 into your /etc/portage/package.mask file. Once an updated nvida driver is released, you can delete that from your package.mask.

Then you can just do a normal emerge -uDNvat world.

Once nvida releases an updated driver you wont have to bother with this.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea these days, depending on how it's done... Link.

Not sure that would make it vulnerable running at R3. I think audio and other devices already do run at R3. Of course, it is a new kernel and there are totally new ways to mess it up.

Most of the time, the X server seems to be the only ring 3 application which requires to access Programmed I/O ports.

That line makes me think Microsoft could be vulnerable to this type of attack if they aren't very very careful. Hopefully they are.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
That line makes me think Microsoft could be vulnerable to this type of attack if they aren't very very careful. Hopefully they are.

If we see Vista slip another month in the next few days, we know they were, right?

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: ForumMaster
xgl for the win. you don't need the resources that Aero takes to have a good looking desktop.

Aero was much faster than XGL on my T42. That's using a Radeon 9600 w/ 64MB of RAM.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I have no use for any of this new Aero and xgl stuff. I want my UI as simple as possible.

mmm, so you would rather have your CPU put together a series of bitmaps then send them off to a GPU to render? Not a good use of the processors.

 

[jcmuse]

how do you grab stuff from the center of the window? if you look, the guy is moving windows around by clicking anywhere. is there a button combo?

 

[xcript]

Originally posted by: jcmuse
how do you grab stuff from the center of the window? if you look, the guy is moving windows around by clicking anywhere. is there a button combo?

Alt+LMB to move, Alt+RMB to resize.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I have no use for any of this new Aero and xgl stuff. I want my UI as simple as possible.

mmm, so you would rather have your CPU put together a series of bitmaps then send them off to a GPU to render? Not a good use of the processors.

I know, my computer is sooo starved for cpu time. And my video card is always hurting. Oh wait, no, its not. Its fine to render my UI any way you please, but I dont need cubes, splashes, transparencys up the wazoo, or any of that other stuff. I want simple, bland colors that make reading easy. I want as much screen space empty as possible. And I want the system to respond as fast as possible with as little animation as possible. it doesnt' need to slide out, it just needs to appear. It doesnt need a 3 second rotating animation, just switch desktops.

 

[stupidkid]

Originally posted by: xcript

Originally posted by: jcmuse
how do you grab stuff from the center of the window? if you look, the guy is moving windows around by clicking anywhere. is there a button combo?

Alt+LMB to move, Alt+RMB to resize.

That also works without XGL. I believe it's a feature of Xorg.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Robor
And the 'wobble' feature is just plain stupid - how was that a good idea?

Oh come on. I sat there practically giggling for an hour when I first tried it out It's so addictive to see how far you can stretch a window when it's stuck to an edge.

 

[imported_LoKe]

I just love XGL. Anymore Eyecandy that I'm missing out on?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: sourceninja

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I have no use for any of this new Aero and xgl stuff. I want my UI as simple as possible.

mmm, so you would rather have your CPU put together a series of bitmaps then send them off to a GPU to render? Not a good use of the processors.

I know, my computer is sooo starved for cpu time. And my video card is always hurting. Oh wait, no, its not. Its fine to render my UI any way you please, but I dont need cubes, splashes, transparencys up the wazoo, or any of that other stuff. I want simple, bland colors that make reading easy. I want as much screen space empty as possible. And I want the system to respond as fast as possible with as little animation as possible. it doesnt' need to slide out, it just needs to appear. It doesnt need a 3 second rotating animation, just switch desktops.

The idea is that your offloading rendering tasks from your cpu to your video card. The video card is much more suited to rendering lots of stuff that is done on your CPU right now. XGL, providing that it matures and you have decent video cards drivers, should actually improve performance.

For instance UTF-8 (as opposed to ASCII) international characters, anti-aliased, vector graphics that resize to fit the size of the screen (Scalable graphics) rather then the resolution is all stuff that would increase usability of your system considurably.

Linux does rescalable vector graphics, alpha transparencies, magnifications (for handicapped individuals) and such right now. XGL will make this stuff fast. (among other things)

Once this stuff matures it will provide large increases in usuability and performance. Right now it's about the eye candy as they need to attract users and developers to help improve and test it and show the video card companies that there is a demand for this stuff so that they update their video card drivers to support it.