Occasional Thoughts

Two days ago I installed a first preview of Looking Glas, a truely 3 dimensional desktop environment from Sun using Java 3D. On Linux you can use it as a real window manager, which works with all existing X-applications, when run in application mode.
Installation The installation is pretty easy. Just download the self extracted file, run it and copy the extracted output to any desired location (e.g. /opt/lg3d). In this folder you can find a bin directory, that contains the executables. When you run lg3d-app-full Looking Glas starts in full screen mode and you can use it as your window manager. Best performance is achieved, when you run this from your login manager. For kdm simply add a file to the directory /opt/kde3/share/apps/kdm/sessions/. Let's name this file lg3d.desktop with the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=XSession
Exec=/opt/lg3d/bin/lg3d-app-full
Name=Looking Glass

Next time you login choose this as session.

Using Looking Glas

On my laptop (HP Compaq nw8240 with 2 MHz Pentium M and an ATI Radeon Mobility X700) Looking Glas runs, although not very smooth. But it's just a concept preview and there should be some room for performance improvements. On the bottom there is a board on which you can place icons. Left clicking starts an application, right clicking zooms out and you can see all desktops at once. A right click on the background and all Windows are folded to the side. I like this pretty much - more than expected. This removes window cluttering , while you still can watch the content of the window in case something important happens. However Window managers like Compiz or Beryl are capable of something different also. When a window loses the focus, it becomes transparent and it's size is reduced - it moves in the background. All Windows are stacked on each other. When you click and drag the Java logo on the upper right corner you can turn all windows around. Then you see how these windows are ordered. Looking Glas comes with some demo applications. On the lower left there is a menu. Click on it and it zooms in, so you can see it better. Here you can find some true 3D applications like a CD cover viewer. When you fold a 3D application to the side you can see the 3D application from it's side. Not just a window that displays it. The 3D elements are true 3D elements on the 3D desktop. This is probably the most notable difference between Looking Glas and a special effect extensions using 3D acceleration like provided by Window managers like Compiz or Beryl. But do you really need this? In fact I found it very confusing to have 3D apps on my desktop, where I wasn't able to recognize, which 3D element is part of which app. As soon as you have opened a couple of 3D apps, this become more and more impossible. Another special feature is that you can write notes on the back of a window. Right click on the title bar and the window turns around. But is this really useful? What sense does it make to attach a note to an application? It makes sense to attach notes to documents but not to applications. E.g. I could open a web page in a browser. I could add a note to the page, but this note is related to the browser, not the document which is the web page.

Putting it all together

I can't see a real advantage of Looking Glas over a modern window manager like Compiz or Beryl. Some 3D effects like the folding of application window to the side is surprisingly intuitive to use, but you can already have this with Compiz or Beryl. As soon as real 3D applications penetrate your desktop, the usuability ends. And I really cannot see a point, why you should be able to turn your windows to any desired angle. BTW: I would have loved to show some screenshots. However I haven't found a way yet to take a screenshot. Ksnapshot or import only return a grey image.