Gentoo, XGL, HGG

These are the things to talk about from last month. Gentoo is a hacker's distribution. It is for the bravest of hearts. Starting from a bare minimum installation (aka portage), it lets you build the system of your choice. The package management tool 'emerge' is more powerful than yum/apt. It allows you to build the source code of the application you want to install (with USE flags). I found the power of this feature when I installed Xgl with it. In fact Xgl being available on Gentoo was one of the reasons to try Gentoo. The building of Xgl, compiz window manager and other libraries with opengl support was very customizable because of the emerge's USE flags. Xgl being still an alpha software, this facility for tweaking proved very helpful.

Xgl is a new desktop rendering technique that uses graphics card's support for opengl. Most of the new graphics cards by Nvidia and ATI support OpenGL in hardware. Xgl (and Redhat's Aigl something) are linux window management tools that give very rich desktop effects. I was stunned to see a demo video of this and couldn't work with my old desktop till I got Xgl installed on them. The wobbly windows, opacity of windows, workspaces on the sides of a cube, all these things put the day-to-day computer access to a new level. Users of MAC will find this stuff familiar. But I am sure that having this thing in open source will show up very innovative results in not so distant future. After looking at this I really felt Microsoft sucks. They have very pathetic traditional window management. I hope vista at least tries to leverage some of OpenGL in hardware stuff. Delay of Vista is a whole new blog topic in itself.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy has been my latest read. I finished two Harry Potters before this. HGG is so "hatke" (or offbeat) ! I am totally amazed how can a person think so abstract and absurd things. I haven't yet decided if I liked this book or not. The shear distinctness of this book is appealing. Besides, it is a collection of many humorous quotes, that is something I am sure I like :)

Apart from this, Xen has been a main occupant of my mind for past couple months. But that's serious matter - 'll save it for some other time.