Novell to Improve Linux Desktop with Xgl

A demonstration of a new graphic subsystem was included into last week's presentation of Novell's Linux Desktop 10. Xgl is claimed to boost desktop display features such as transparent objects, 3d effects and zooming windows.

It appears that Novell, like others, noticed the success of Apple's sparkly interfaces and would like the community to help spread their new toy.

"It'll be one of those open-source situations where people get a hold of the framework, and we'll get new user interface paradigms to come out," said Nat Friedman, Novell's VP of long and pretentious job titles. "That's not something people can do on a Mac. I want to see 1,000 flowers bloom here."

Both Apple and Microsoft have been working on graphics. Apple's Mac OS X got new visual features built in, and Vista is supposed to contain a whole new graphics infrastructure.

Confronted with the practical aspect of pretty desktops, Friedman argued that bits like, for example showing a window zoom liquidly into the taskbar when minimized make it easier to understand the system. "Those little things give a desktop a sense of physicality."

Novell's David Reveman, lead programmer on this project, released the Xgl sources last month, and Novell is now set to release the plug-in framework and sample plug-ins.
Xgl is to become part of X.org, a popular port of the X Window System, distributed with the Slackware, Red Hat, SUSE and Debian Linux distributions, as well as Open Solaris and some of the BSD flavors.

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