Ubuntu look and feel future

[ubeauty]

I can see ubuntu/gnome/beryl/XGL developing and merging and somewhere in the fray, we'll be seeing 3d desktops, where you just zoom into your desktop objects (a room in a building?), and as you do , the get bigger and clearer, until you start seeing the objects within (say folders), and as u zoom into a folder you start seeing the files, and as u zoom into a file it launches the associated app and you see the doc.
Thoughts?

[steven8]

Wow.

[Shay Stephens]

Maybe for novelty, but all that zooming takes too much time to be productive.

[ubeauty]

Yeah, fair point. I wonder how many people use a gui for speed rather than convenience. surely #sudo gomake coffee is faster than launching gomake then loading the file 'coffee' and executing 'coffee'?

[steven8]

what kind of coffee?

[j3cakes]

Well, before you can specify the type of coffee, you'd have to sudo gedit /usr/coffee/.mug file to specify the size and location. Then you'd have to open nautilus, find your .mug, click on it, click 'ok' at the error message telling you that you don't have permission to make changes to it, r-click on it and run a script to open it as root so that you can change its state from 'empty' to 'full'....

..then you'd have to sudo gedit /usr/coffee/bean.conf to define the range of available coffees.

[viper]

what kind of coffee?

Why, Ubuntu bean roast

[Circus-Killer]

thats the downside of beryl. people look at the amazing cool candy it provides and assume that if beryl is defaulted, that so will all the animations.

the whole thing with beryl is that if it does get included in feisty, they will probably tone it down a lot. most of the animations that will be defaulted will be soft and subtle, almost so you dont notice them. i mean really, back in the windows xp, after 2 days of using it, i bet you forgot that the menus faded, even you're looking at them at this very second.

in other words, beryl can be used for more than just crazy eye-candy. it can be used to suttely improve on the desktop look and feel without getting in the way. this is the way in which i see the desktop evolving in the next few months. i could be completely wrong, this is just my prediction.

[ubeauty]

what kind of coffee?

coffee.arabica

[steven8]

sudo apt-get fresh roast-upgrade

Honestly though, I love the visual that such a neat interactive GUI concept evokes. It's SO Tron! But my poor computer couldn't handle it. That is my fear with having Feisty Fawn tricked out right off the bat. It will be doing just what Vista is going to do. Exclude folks who don't have the most up to date hardware.

[ubeauty]

what kind of coffee?


it can be used to suttely improve on the desktop look and feel without getting in the way. this is the way in which i see the desktop evolving in the next few months. i could be completely wrong, this is just my prediction.
Exactly, and add another dimension - the hardware is up to it, the project(s) are well advanced, it can be done - perhaps we need mice with another wheel? I love the idea because I can just see my desktop- a view into a room, the work room, the entertainment room, the games room, the meeting room, the techie room...just walk to your favourite room, go to your filing cabinet and open the draws, pull out a file and edit it or CD and play it on the player. Come to think of it, that is a closer paradigm to Linux than a 2D window that works for windows.

[Circus-Killer]

Honestly though, I love the visual that such a neat interactive GUI concept evokes. It's SO Tron! But my poor computer couldn't handle it. That is my fear with having Feisty Fawn tricked out right off the bat. It will be doing just what Vista is going to do. Exclude folks who don't have the most up to date hardware.


again, people making the wrong assumptions. ubuntu will only default to beryl if the hardware required is there. i'm sure that if your hardware doesnt support beryl, that the ubuntu setup will fallback to a regular 2d desktop.

[falkenberg_cph]

actually Tom Cruise is using future Ubuntu/Beryl in Minority Report. :)

[viper]

actually Tom Cruise is using future Ubuntu/Beryl in Minority Report. :)

Absolutley agree......

[steven8]

again, people making the wrong assumptions. ubuntu will only default to beryl if the hardware required is there. i'm sure that if your hardware doesnt support beryl, that the ubuntu setup will fallback to a regular 2d desktop.

Thank you. I did not realize that. It makes me feel more at ease.

[ubeauty]

excellent - so what will it take to build such a beast?
Need some software to render 3D desktops and objects (icons cn go jump)

[j3cakes]

there would be a whole cottage industry - virtual decorators.

"ya could 'ave that in lilac and green but there's a shortage in the repos and prices have gone up. me bruvva 'ad one in the van but 'e sold it last choos'de"

..I wonder what the text shortcut would be for the sound of tradesmen sucking air through their teeth.

[ubeauty]

there would be a whole cottage industry - virtual decorators.

"ya could 'ave that in lilac and green but there's a shortage in the repos and prices have gone up. me bruvva 'ad one in the van but 'e sold it last choos'de"

..I wonder what the text shortcut would be for the sound of tradesmen sucking air through their teeth.

Virtual world - politicians and all...the tradesman sucking air through his teeth would be a tradesmansuckingairthroughteeth.mp3

[steven8]

there would be a whole cottage industry

We could scrollwheel into our virtual cottage, up to the sideboard, and select our program from under a covered silver platter!

You know, this is much better than the idea I had awhile back to develop an OS called 'Doors', where each icon is a door, and you knock on it with the cursor. It opens and the program expands from 'within' it. My wife squelched that idea in a nanosecond! I belive "Ludicrous", was the term she used. :-)

[ubeauty]

We could scrollwheel into our virtual cottage, up to the sideboard, and select our program from under a covered silver platter!

You know, this is much better than the idea I had awhile back to develop an OS called 'Doors', where each icon is a door, and you knock on it with the cursor. It opens and the program expands from 'within' it. My wife squelched that idea in a nanosecond! I belive "Ludicrous", was the term she used. :-)

The idea is perfect -stop listening to the misses - just call the os 'buildings'. Imagine owning your own skyscraper.

[steven8]

stop listening to the misses

Best idea I've heard all day! :-)

Now you got my mind cranking! Customize your desktop with a skyscraper of your choosing, looking from the top down (3/4 angle?) Each window is labeled like a folder. You choose the window to go in based on what you want to do, and it 'glides' into that region of the building, etc., etc.!

[j3cakes]

are we working towards building the matrix here? albeit a Ubuntu-matrix.

"what're we gonna do tonight, Brain?"
"same thing we do every night, Pinky, make our plans for WORLD DOMINATION!"

[delfick]

WORLD DOMINATION!

sounds fun :D:D

once we've acheived that, can we then order everyone to remake the world out of chocolate ??

wouldn't it be nice :D

(sry, took that idea from a commercial :p)

[Tomosaur]

The problem here is that the GUI is seen as an 'improvement' over the command line, but there's been no real incentive or drive to make things faster and easier than just typing a command. With all this eye candy, it'll eventually take an hour to open a folder what with all the zooming and flashing and wobbling. It may look nice, but there's no real point to it unless it makes things easier.

[graabein]

This is why I still work in tty1. ;)

[j3cakes]

...faster and easier than just typing a command...

assuming, of course, you already know the command, its arguments, expected output and what to do if it goes wrong.

[ubeauty]

assuming, of course, you already know the command, its arguments, expected output and what to do if it goes wrong.

Most computer users would be totally lost without a gui nor would they touch a computer if it wasn't for the gui - I don't believe it is a question whether or not we use a gui, the question is in which direction should it evolve? Everything I've seen is just more of the same. Folder, start, menu, click....what about a paradigm like our real world - move to a room, a work room, open a drawer - a real looking drawer, in a real looking room. ](*,)

[maniacmusician]

quite frankly, computers work well because they're not like the real world; they're easier/faster to navigate and use. I liked the idea in the OP, if you can get it to work efficiently. But that would involve having hard set excellent applications for everything by default, including video, images, etc; which I don't think we have at the moment.

[mcduck]

I tried a 3D GUI once, it had some rooms where you could work, book case for keeping you files and a TV to play movies. It ws fun for about 30 mins and then started to feel annoying because simple things like opening files took a lot of work..

That kind of way of using computers just isn't practical.

[mips]

I can see ubuntu/gnome/beryl/XGL developing and merging and somewhere in the fray, we'll be seeing 3d desktops, where you just zoom into your desktop objects (a room in a building?), and as you do , the get bigger and clearer, until you start seeing the objects within (say folders), and as u zoom into a folder you start seeing the files, and as u zoom into a file it launches the associated app and you see the doc.
Thoughts?

I'm pretty sure this has been done before. think it was by British Telecom, recall seeing it on a series called "Beyond 2000"

[darkhatter]

before you freak out about the whole beryl thing, take a look at Novell. All the animations that they had by default wasn't over the top, you almost didn't notice it. I'm guessing that Ubuntu is just going to copy Novell.

btw that idea is amazing, but that doesn't need to be in the future it can be done now.

[Camden]

Maybe beryl/aiglx or whatever does not need to be activated right off the bat. Have them defaulted off but provide an easy on switch to activate them. Give the user the choice but don't make it so difficult to install/configure as it can be now (especially with an ATI card). It seems like the biggest hurdle would be card drivers. It would be nice to access the nvidia-glx driver in an official repo rather than adding one from an ever changing list.

I hope to see a beryl/aiglx option in feisty.

[Steveire]

Now you got my mind cranking! Customize your desktop with a skyscraper of your choosing, looking from the top down (3/4 angle?) Each window is labeled like a folder. You choose the window to go in based on what you want to do, and it 'glides' into that region of the building, etc., etc.!
Been watching Jurassic Park recently?
'This is UNIX. I know this!'
http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html
The linux version is here (http://fsv.sourceforge.net/).
Download it first and unzip it.
Then install these packages:


sudo aptitude install gtkglarea5-dev libgtk1.2-dev

Then do the configure/make/make install dance


$ cd ~/source/jurassicFSView
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Then go back to your home directory and start it.


$ cd ~
$ fsv

This is only a filesystem viewer, and will not execute anything for you. It's just like the stock fsview program, but on a slant, and giving info on the files.