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But if you compete with Vista, which will probably ship early 2007, you need to have a product that works by early 2007, and not at some unknown time when the driver developers had enough free time to write the code.

Xgl wasn't developed by part-time coders, it was developed by Novell, who wants to use it to compete with Microsoft.

You are right, but the r200 driver is (which is the only driver for radeons that the open source community can work with.). You can of course hope that ATI fixes it's drivers (and I guess they will) but it's not sure and it's especially not sure whether this will be ready to compete with Vista.


But when Vista ships in 2007 and you still need to have several years of Linux knowledge to activate Xgl and then have it crash once or twice every day, it's just not the same.

Several years of Linux knowledge? You're exaggerating qutie a bit.



A bit, maybe, but not that much. You need to know a lot about the complicated system that is the X11-system to really understand what you have to do to activate it and why it does work. Of course, this "why" is not so important when everything works, but if something goes wrong, many people end up with a system that crashes as soon as it enters Xgl. I can direct someone to configure Xgl or give him a step-by-step manual, but without extensive Linux/PC knowledge, it will be like magic to him.


Now, you're assuming that I'm talking about Xgl as it is now in Dapper Drake, which isn't out as you've mentioned. And sure, Xgl doesn't work with all configurations - but it is possible to have it work perfectly with some configurations, which is the same type of controlled environment in which OS X runs (for example).


Well, as you said "it's out now!" i assumed you talked about how it is now... You are right with your comparison to OS X, but OS X is made only for these specific configurations, while Linux is meant to run on most PCs. If you buy a PC especially for Xgl and Linux, you will have a great working system. But if you upgrade your existing XP system to Dapper, it will most probably not work flawlessly with XGL.


Most of the problems right now have to do with ATI drivers. When ATI gets up to speed with Nvidia a lot more configurations will work out-of-the box (and, yes, it is almost as easy as "apt-get install xgl" if you're using a Nvidia card - the only other thing you have to do is change a line in two files...)


I guess you are pretty much right here. It's just that you sounded like "it works right now, Vista is not here". If you say "it's pretty experimental right now, but i guess it will work before 2007" it's a different story.


You are a bit harsh. Do you really expect your Mom to read 2 hours in the dapper forum to find which packets she needs to apt-get and then spend some more hours figuring out what to put in which config file to circumvent some driver bugs?

No, I don't expect her to do that. But she won't be able to install Vista either. I expect Xgl to be added to EasyUbuntu so that it can be installed and configured with a few click of the mouse.

You seem to think that the current method to install it in Dapper will stay that way. I'm sorry, but that's a bit naive. You also ignore the fact that Novell will come out with a complete package in their next distro...come on, Xgl just came out, and you won't accept anything less than perfection?


I don't think it will always use the current method to install. I guess everyone can install Ubuntu or XP (or OS X, or Vista) today, as it's not much more than pressing a "next"-button today. Installing will improve, and sooner or later installing Xgl or the the compositing system with air in it's name (sorry, forget the exact name) will not be harder than that. But everywhere I read about it, it says "EXPERIMENTAL", "DON'T USE ON YOUR MAIN SYSTEM" etc. That's why I'm not too sure that it will be ready for as much people as Vista will be by the time it comes out.

You know, i really like Linux. It does almost everything i want, but where it fails, it's almost everytime in thing like graphics or audio. No other major system I know has problems playing several sounds simultaneously. But with Linux, you have several sound systems that do mostly work if you stick to "their" programs. I am just afraid that it will be something like this for accelerated desktops, too.

Also, again you state that i critisize Xgl for what it is today. I think that's only normal. I can not see into the future and guess how great it will once be. I just see that you can install Vista and it will work with every DirectX 9 card right now, while you still need some magic config file tricks when you try to run Xgl on a non-NVidia system.


there is a big difference between having these effects "just working" (like in OS X

Give me a stable hardware platform like Apple has for OS X, and I'll show you a stable and efficient Xgl installed as default. If you want to compare, at least provide a level playing field, otherwise your comparisons simply won't be valid.

I just talked about the user experience, not about the technical aspects. I really hope that you will be able to just install Ubuntu (or OpenSuse, or Fedora) and it will have a working accelerated desktop by the time Vista comes out. But right now, as I stated above, the Vista beta will "just work" with every DX9 card, and Xgl works well with most NV cards and rather badly with almost all the others.

Again, i guess we have to specify whether we talk about the state of things right now, which is very promising for Xgl, but absolutely not ready for daily use (except maybe for some), or about how we guess it will be in 2007.