From the Who-Cares-But-Me Department: Xgl

This post will entertain virtually nobody but me. If you aren’t interested is seeing me being entertained, you can go ahead and stop reading.

Aside from a scrap mini-pc I turn on every now and again for my Windows-only Line6 Guitar Port, I run a Linux shop at home. X is the windows system in ‘nix, and Xgl is a relatively new graphics layer that takes advantage of modern graphics cards to give you lots of eye candy. That’s it in a nutshell - if you want gross technical details, Wikipedia has a good write up.

Last night I installed Xgl and compiz (another package), changed my X configuration, restarted X, and stared. And stared. And stared.

Wow. I’ve never seen a desktop do what this desktop can do. There’s no way to explain it, so go check out a google video of Xgl in action here.

It’s still alpha, so if you’re a Linux user, proceed with caution. I’ve found with my cheapo Radeon 9250 card X will occaisionally take it’s ball and go home. Nvidia support is supposedly better. There’s a live CD here that you can use to make sure your hardware can run it.



This irritates me to no end.

**For the Linux newbie, there are probably 20+ different desktops you can run. The two most popular desktops by far, however, are Gnome and KDE.