__/ [ AB ] on Sunday 18 February 2007 17:55 \__
> On 2007-02-18, Ian Hilliard <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> claimed:
>> This last weekend I have had the chance to play with Vista in a local
>> department store. The machine didn't have any real software on it so I can
>> only say that I had a play. It was cool, but I have no idea how this stuff
>> would work in a production environment.
>>
>> I also updated my own laptop from Suse 10.1 to openSUSE 10.2. After
>> getting all the necessary functions and programs working, I enabled XGL
>> and had a bit of a play.
>>
>> The two different OS's both provide different solutions for finding that
>> job your working on when you have multiple documents open. Traditionally,
>> the document name has been used, but it is sometimes nice to see the
>> document.
>>
>> The XGL solution is based on the concept that there are multiple desktops
>> and it provides a nice way of scrolling between the different desktops. It
>> also doesn't seem to take much in the way of resources to achieve
>> this 'coolness'.
>>
>> Microsoft, on the other hand, have decided to remain with a single
>> desktop. Their solution is to show all the pages and provide a tab between
>> them. It is useful, but it begs the question, why does it need special
>> hardware to achieve this simple 3D trick. One has to wonder if it is
>> simply to force hardware upgrades.
>>
>> At least for the moment, I will be leaving XGL switched on, because it is
>> useful. On the other hand, I would not go out and buy a new machine just
>> to get this functionality. I suspect that I am not the only one with this
>> point of view.
>
> Count me in on that.
>
> I'm in dire need of a new machine. But not for the 3D stuff. I've
> played with it before. And, while I find it intriguing, I have no use
> for it on a daily basis.
>
> It would be more useful for WOWing the people who are considering
> wasting a fortune to appease the monopolists by buying a lot of
> hardware unnecessarily. Or the ones who watsed a small fortune on a
> "Vista-ready" machine that can't do the only thing that Vista has
> changed from XP: 3D.
>
> But once the initial WOW is over, it can easily get in the way.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe over time it can become a faster way of doing
> things. But learning to use it in a way that becomes more productive
> may come at a cast of lower productivy for years before everything
> evens out.
>
> One desktop! How idiotic is *that*?
Judging by what I see if KWin crashes, Linux/X handles virtual desktops as
though they were one. It emulates/enhances the concept of minimise/restore.
Of course, it also enables the user to group various different applications,
so moving from one virtual desktop to another still involves a productivity
gain. Other invoked actions may involve change of wallpaper. This explains,
for instance, why it's not possible to have different panels in different
virtual desktops. We had a long discussion about this in the KDE newsgroups
last year. The same goes for differentiating the contents of ~/Desktop
depending on which virtual desktop you have focus on. The shifts can be
scripted, but it would be flaky.
What I fail to see is how the assumption above fits with XGL. You can
actually view multiple virtual desktop simultaneously, so there ought to be
some mistake here. Maybe it's much more sophisticated than Windows pagers
after all. They just mimic the functionality using some pseudo-virtual
desktop implementation. Don't expect revolving cubes in Windows any times
soon. The whole shebang is too monolithic and difficult to maintain. Just
look at the number of bugs (a step backwards) that 5-6 years have brought to
the Windows camp.
--
~~ Greetings
Roy S. Schestowitz | FreeBSD - sidling with a little devil
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