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From: vallor <vallor@cultnix.org>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Basic question about Linux versions - 3D Linux
Date: 15 Mar 2025 11:13:20 GMT
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On Sat, 15 Mar 2025 10:38:02 +0000, Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> wrote in
<pan$30006$d20223f3$f7e49a4f$9fbc0d5@linux.rocks>:

> On Fri, 14 Mar 2025 15:57:14 -0700, x wrote:
> 
>>  Linux however is not
>> crippled and stifled in that way.  What add ons and operating systems
>> now exist with 3 dimensional space as its GUI rather than a 2D one
>> (like most GUIs)?
>>
>>
> After a minute of searching, I found this on Reddit:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass
> 
> 
> This 3D desktop project is now defunct and it never caught on.
> 
> I can see why.  3D GUIs are a stupid idea.  They are not an answer
> looking for a question, but more like a hallucination looking for a
> schizophrenic.
> 
> Accept the reality.  The ultimate GUI, that of 2D windows, keyboard, and
> mouse, is already with us.  It will never get any better despite many
> vain attempts to make it better.
> 
> It's just like a car.  With the steering wheel, brake and accelerator
> pedals, and shift lever, we have attained the ultimate driver UI.  It
> can never get any better despite idiotic attempts to do so.

I watched the video with interest.

I'm sort of agreeing with you (for a change!), but there are some ideas
from the presentation that both made it in to Beryl/compiz, as well as
could enhance the current desktop experience.

Regarding the latter, I thought that flipping a window around
for annotations made sense -- or generally, annotated bookmarks
of some sort, in a browser-independent fashion.  Also, I was
intrigued by the CD picker application.  I think I would rather it show
album covers, rather than CD's, but that's just me -- also, maybe better
organization, since I have hundreds of music albums, and I can't imagine
what that would look like in a carousel arrangement.

Regarding the former, I remember using Beryl to play a video with
mplayer fullscreen, then rotating the cube to see the video playing
on one face of the cube.  That's a cute trick, but it doesn't really help
with much of anything -- but being able to push a video off to the side
makes some sort of sense, if you have only one monitor.

Of course, if you have two monitors, you can just fullscreen your video
on the second monitor.  (And on that note:  it's a shame that Linux's
NVIDIA DP/HDMI audio drivers will only address one DP/HDMI port at
a time, which means you can only drive one set of monitor-embedded
speakers at a time.)

Finally, there's the fact that Beryl (and I assume, compiz) can have
windows "float" over cube surfaces while rotating, which does give some
3D structure to the whole thing -- you can "see under" windows.  But
nowadays -- with compositing window managers like xfce -- one can have
a window be translucent while dragging it, so you can "see through" a
window at what's underneath.  (I suppose one could call that a
"2.5D window manager".)

Thank you for your post, Farley, that was good advocacy. :)

-- 
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
   OS: Linux 6.14.0-rc6 Release: Mint 22.1 Mem: 258G
   "My reality check just bounced."