Al Abut

When Did Linux Become Cool?

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Okay, I'll admit it here: I've barely ever dabbled with Linux and only for the geek cred when I did. I'm coming out of the nerd closet to say that the most I've ever done is throw Fedora on an old junker just to say that I could. I've recently been tempted to play with Ubuntu, given the buzz about having a slick look and being easy to update, and I also have a growing desire to make sure all of my data gets saved in open formats that avoid lockin, so there's a gentle and growing itch to play with free software. But again, I have to say that it's never really risen above the level of a mildly passing interest.

To put it bluntly, I've never considered any Linux distro to be 1) useful for getting work done (OS X is good enough for my greenhorn-to-intermediate unix needs, thanks) or 2) fun. Yeah, fun - the absolute worst part has been that the UI always seems to suck. Even with the new flavors out recently. Seriously, what is with all the brown, Ubuntu? It's like a great big digital poo dump on my monitor - I feel like I need to call someone in to clean off the screen.

But I'll be goddamned if this isn't the most jaw-droppingly cool UI preview video I've ever seen - hang on for about the 2:30 mark for when it really gets nuts, with high quality dvd playback overlapping between different spinning virtual desktops:

That clip is so cool, easily blowing away Vista and even outshining all of the Leopard previews except for maybe Time Machine. Yes, something cool, from the free software nerds.

Could this demo be old hat to those with virtual desktops? It could be, I have no idea - fast user switching is all I've ever played with and it's been a bit on the slow side.

By the way, I was going to post to a similar example from Apple's upcoming Leopard operating system, but it looks like the google video got taken down. [Update: see the Youtube version below] It's too bad, you really should have seen it, it was pretty sweet - it showed off the combination of Expose and Spaces, from the perspective of the Spaces overview mode with the narrator dragging files from one pane to another. Hard to describe but very cool and yet still nowhere near as cool as the Linux UI preview above.

Update: The google video of Spaces and Leopard that got taken down has been reposted to Youtube, embedded below for your viewing pleasure:

elsewhere on the web: OSX, macosx, apple, leopard, linux, ubuntu, xgl, xgldesktop, UI, opensource, freesoftware, video