Good thread. On Friday, March 16, 2012 11:40:32, Joseph Apuzzo wrote: > Because of the recent meeting "Desktop Shootout" I ended up playing with a > lot of VM software ( KVM, VirtualBox, VMWare )
I was doing the same, trying the different environments. > I was amazed that VirtualBox had working 3D pass-through support, which > VM's of Debian-SID, Mint12-Cinnamon, and even Windows 8 were able to use. One of things I find interesting is that the Debian 'netinst' iso image comes with the ability to recognize that it's being installed in a VirtualBox environment and will automatically load the VirtualBox guest additions. You can also install a different desktop environment (rather than the default of Gnome) by choosing "Advanced options" -> "Alternative desktop environments". The other options are KDE4, LXDE, and Xfce. > That is as Sean Dague pointed out at the shootout, "modern desktops now > depend on 3D rendering to display the desktop". ( look let's not argue that > they really don't NEED to, it's how they implemented it creates > the dependency ) Interestingly, KDE4 does not depend on a 3D environment being available. KDE (and Qt5) are moving over to using an OpenGL access methodology by default, but there will still be a rasterizing driver and an llvmpipe driver available, so OpenGL will not be a dependency AFAICT. More detail: http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/05/31/qml-scene-graph-in-master/ AFAIK Gnome3 is the only DE that has actaully got a dependency on 3D being available. And unfortunately I don't think 3D on Linux has yet come to the point where we can conisder it as "something that will always work", so I'm glad that KDE4 (and Qt) can fall back on llvmpipe and raster and that other DE's haven't gone down the 3D dependency path. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef May 2 - Git Jun 6 - June 2012 Meeting
