BF2S Forums Linux Desktop

CHAO5 wrote:

hello guys

have you ever seen something like this?
http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/

I have this on my notebook (Xubuntu)... Its amazing. Nice effects like "real" transparency and woobly windows and of course the cube... (look at the videos)

What is your opinion?

I saw this back in February and wanted to try it out.  I never got around to getting it set up and properly configured until some time later.  I now have my laptop running with this and the hardware is nothing more than an integrated Intel graphics, which goes to show that one doesn't need extremely fast 3D hardware.  Even this can run at its minimum.  There are some minor quirks here and there.  And the code is alpha/beta state.  So far, I am able to run GNOME 2.14 fine.  The only drawback is when it comes to video playback, where anything bigger than 640x480 in video size tend to be too much for the chip.  Fullscreen video playback isn't very possible but at least for 640x480, it's barely enough to view some anime episodes here and there.

The laptop runs Gentoo Linux and have been fairly optimized for simple tasks like IRC, media playback, and web surfing.  I have yet to try any games on it, knowing full well that anything that requires 3D accelerated hardware to run will probably overload the graphics chip.  While I'd like to test this software on other systems, my other computer is currently inaccessible for a desktop run.

_j5689_ wrote:

Did it come with a Mozilla browser like Linuxs usually do?  I've worked with Redhat Linux, Xyphos I think it was, and Linspire.  Linspire was without a doubt the best OS for Linux that i've tried.

Due to the nature of open source softwares, you have the choice of using the Mozilla application suite that includes everything.  Then there's Firefox, the stand-alone web browser.  There's also Thunderbird for email should one need that too.  There's Epiphany for GNOME and GTK where its HTML rendering is based on Mozilla/Firefox/gecko.  On the KDE/Qt end, there's Konquerer.  Opera is also an option for those running a Qt-based system or has that library installed.  From all those, one has the choice of running any of those web browser, and they are all suitable for varying web browsing needs.  Linux distribution will package a web browser that the distribution group prefers... but you always have the option and choice to use a different browser entirely.

CHAO5 wrote:

You can find some help in these forums http://ubuntuforums.org. But the video playback ins't supported yet. I tryed too. But i think with gmplayer and a lot of parameter, you can get your video running (but cpu 100%).

Ugh... I'm usually miffed when I go to a forum only to not be able to search.   I'm very reluctant to sign up just to look for info and docs (as if I didn't have enough forum accounts scattered across the 'net as it is).  Maybe when I get around to it, I'll sign up and look it up.  Some of the info gets cross-posted over to Gentoo so perhaps it'll find its way over to there too.

gmplayer... I'll take an educated guess that it's based on mplayer.  I haven't bothered much with mplayer.  So far, I've Totem installed using gstreamer as a backend.  VLC is also installed as a fallback/backup.  Installing a 3rd seems to be leaning on overboard.  As much as I'd like to get full-speed playback in full-screen, it's not much of a high priority.  At this time, the code is still fairly new so I'll let it evolve and mature.  I might end up switching to AIGLX just so I can have my fullscreen video playback.  Who knows?