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Ubuntu & the demoscene

category: general [glöplog]
Two notes before I make my point:

One, a demo-type bootup screen would not benefit Mark Shuttleworth financially; it might inflate his ego, but it would really benefit the Linux community by being able to say "look at what my system can do!"

Two, this sounds more like livecd material. A livecd is meant to show off the system and demonstrate all its capabilities. What better way than with a kickass intro to say right at the beginning that this is different and better?
Conversely, I'm not sure it'd be so good (depending on the size/complexity/flashiness) for general use- you'd want to be able to turn it off if not for the potential speed issue, but because after a while it'd get annoying.
Thus far the only 'demo' in Linux is bb, which is included in Ubuntu's universe repository (under misc/toys or some such)



Ok, that said I'd like to direct everyone's attention to Elive.
Elive is using the Enlightenment window manager/desktop environment (not KDE or Gnome or XFCE) and the whole thing is about as demoscene as I've ever seen. Most of this is due to Enlightenment version 17 (or 1.7, or 0.17, I'm not sure which). E17 is unfinished and a VERY long time coming, but even in its current state it's pretty impressive.

Enlightenment's login menu (Entrance) is animated and glows (yes, glow); the desktop wallpaper can be animated, there are all sorts of transparency effects and flashing glowing things all around the desktop, and the system seems to be extremely configurable.
The Elive cd shows off a lot of this with some graphically nice themes, and has demos of the various features of the display manager E17 is using...

The best part is, Enlightenment DR17 does all this extremely fast (Even running off a CD on a Pentium II it's pretty quick) and it's very small- they claim (I haven't tested this part) the libraries fit in 1 megabyte of code. I do notice that the Elive livecd includes a heck of a lot of programs compared to any other liveCD I've tried.

Enlightenment DR17 is about the closest to a demoscene feel I've seen in the Linux world. Rasterman definitely seems to know his stuff backwards and forwards... but he seems to be pursuing perfection, and not finishing off the code.
added on the 2006-10-12 07:14:40 by crusader crusader
quote]Maybe I'm in an error with "money" but about "power" it is absolutely clear. And mostly are the same thing. Why a person could start any project like Ubuntu? You will say "an humanist project" for example. But, isn't it that he feels better as the leader of an humanis project? Isn't it that in the end, what he search for is for that feeling? This is the feeling of power. And everybody has it. Don't tell me anybody does anything for the whole humanity. As individuals we do the things first for ourselves, then what we do could have any impact in other people or not, but that is never the first reason.[/quote]

Really, I think it's true, most of what we do indirectly relates to our desire for alpha-male status, but it applies to everything that every human does (apart from eating and masturbating). You can't just selectively the concept to someone for the sake of winning an argument. It's like saying : (Insert-company-here) is bad because they want to make money.
added on the 2006-10-12 09:30:21 by chameleon chameleon
Inside http://www.rasterman.com/files/ there are some cute movies of e17 in action
added on the 2006-10-12 09:33:34 by _-_-__ _-_-__
http://wiki.elivecd.org/community/fr/423 pwned
Quote:

linux==cancer


No, Maali, you got it all wrong.

Piracy == cancer
Linux is the cure.
added on the 2006-10-13 00:22:53 by sparcus sparcus
I especially like http://www.rasterman.com/files/e17_movie-04.avi, which not only shows the four-overlay parallax scrolling desktop (which REALLY taxed my computer; the framerate was about as low as the video) but all the other stuff he's got going.

His PC must be a lot faster than mine.
added on the 2006-10-13 04:22:58 by crusader crusader
I want my pc to be as fast as possible! I use no wallpaper to have some more MB free. I don't understand all of this animated shit nowadays most of it doesn't make things easier to use, or less boring.
added on the 2006-10-13 05:24:00 by xernobyl xernobyl
Eh, it's probably a proof of concept. I doubt many people would try to run that as their default backdrop, and as the movies seem to show you can turn off and unload all those widgets.

Also, Enlightenment is using software rendering.

---------------

Anyway, I suspect Mark Shuttleworth wants something on that level of gee-whiz to show off Ubuntu (and Linux) and what it can do (but E17 isn't ready yet, and Gnome and KDE are more popular and time-tested).

I think I once suggested replacing 'bb' in their miscellaneous repository with 'yellow rose of texas'...
added on the 2006-10-13 05:59:24 by crusader crusader
Hello,

I wrote the article for OhmyNews. Sorry so much was wrong. I don't understand much technology. Also my guess is that most of the proposal will change anyway. However there is a video tape of what was said and this will be edited eventually.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no=321779&rel_no=1

Most of the OhmyNews article is to explain background for people who know even less than I do. That's my story anyway.

why don't you sign up as citizen journalists and write something better? Ohmynews is based on the background that South Korea has had broadband roughly four years longer than most places. So there is a tech theme though most things are covered on the site.
added on the 2006-10-13 13:42:29 by will789 will789
Mark might be a really nice guy or whatever makes people all starry-eyed about the prospect of a loader bar, but the last thing I read about him was that he was still trying to figure out how to make Ubuntu profitable. Perhaps he ought to think more about the books and leave the eyecandy gimmickry for now?

This, however, was funny:
Quote:
Sundown is a U.K. party event on the demo scene, similar to Assembly in Helsinki or Breakpoint in Bingen am Rhein, but on a much smaller scale.

In that regard, Rob is jarig is similar to The Popular Demo, except in a much more rushed timeframe. :)
added on the 2006-10-13 14:20:17 by Shifter Shifter
Well.. there are enough funds to keep it supported for a certain promised duration of time. For instance, I believe they are promising to support the 6.06 server for at least 5 years, and he has deep enough pockets to support this. This means to me that they can approach profitability/sustainability as a long term goal rather than as an urgent need.. and so they can create eyecandy for a while yet ;) (or more seriously, increase marketshare and dependence upon it)
added on the 2006-10-13 16:15:37 by bigcheese bigcheese
the way of open source design:

you draw a cool chameleon...

BB Image

someone comes and adds a lameass mouth...

BB Image
I use osx, i never reboot and i dont use screensavers. I think people who does are stupid and out of their stupidity they think its a good idea to have mini demos running while booting a machine. i mean, its not like when you acctually are booting a damn hack for an os that you acctually want to know what crashes your system now and then.
added on the 2006-10-13 19:35:53 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
I think the whole premise of the idea is:

After the kernel has done it's thing, almost all of the activity the computer is doing is I/O intensive, leaving a HUGE amount of unused CPU time. So, basically, why not fill that with something that looks pretty?

Who's good at doing pretty with minimal I/O? The demoscene.

I think it's a good idea, that could really promote the demoscene, and introduce yet another category to the scene that would greatly improve it.

Think about it - you don't have X, you'll have the frame buffer. You won't have GL, you'll just have your old tricks from the old days. Palette tricks and other raster tricks, but without the problems of slow hardware on the backend. I think it'll be great - but then again, I'm only a lamearse media junkey that turns up at 2 or demoparties and contributes little. Nyatch.
added on the 2006-10-15 03:15:32 by dotwaffle dotwaffle
Quote:
Palette tricks and other raster tricks, but without the problems of slow hardware on the backend.


No. With the great Linux framebuffer you only have high color, no palettes. You have NO hardware acceleartion whatsoever (not even 2D acceleration) and framebuffer is usually initialized for 1024x768 or 1280x1024 on modern distributions.
Yeah, try to have fluid fullscreen graphics with that resolution and complete software rendering. Just copying a backbuffer to the screen will eat up the CPU.
added on the 2006-10-15 10:56:46 by jua jua
a loadingbar doesnt have to be fullscreen?
added on the 2006-10-15 11:18:33 by the_Ye-Ti the_Ye-Ti
Abominations of nature collide: rasterbars when linux is booting.

I guess we all saw it coming.
added on the 2006-10-15 11:45:57 by Gargaj Gargaj
Quote:
a loadingbar doesnt have to be fullscreen?

Yeah but Linux already had loadingbars for several years, I don't think it needs demo-stuff for that...
added on the 2006-10-15 12:00:30 by jua jua
Quote:
No. With the great Linux framebuffer you only have high color, no palettes. You have NO hardware acceleartion whatsoever (not even 2D acceleration) and framebuffer is usually initialized for 1024x768 or 1280x1024 on modern distributions.
Yeah, try to have fluid fullscreen graphics with that resolution and complete software rendering. Just copying a backbuffer to the screen will eat up the CPU.


You can use 8 bit colour with vesafb. I don't know about other distro's but I know ubuntu uses it.

I don't see what the problem is with this, I think it's a great idea and you could easily turn it off if you need to see what's going on when booting (by default you can't see it in Edgy anyway). I'm in favour of it because:

1) The default ubuntu boot is ugly (especially in edgy)
2) Not everyone want's or needs to see scrolling text when booting.
3) It'd leave good first impressions on those who want to change to linux.
4) It may not be that useful, but neither is compiz/beryl and that is pretty popular and shows off the "diversity of linux".
5) I have no idea how to code it.
added on the 2006-10-15 12:41:21 by chameleon chameleon
crusader: Ubuntu's installer (since 6.06) is also a liveCD.

xernobyl, sverige: Ubuntu is targeted towards simple users (mom and dad style). Hence its motto: "Linux for human beings". These users might be impressed by a stylish introduction / bootup animation.

People around here are nowhere near that targetgroup. They might use Ubuntu to learn Linux better, but they would probably switch to something more advanced soon (Debian, Slackware, Gentoo). And by more advanced I mean "with more choice" like for example the option to remove all the fancy stuff that hog system resources.

But never forget that Ubuntu is purely simple-user oriented.
added on the 2006-10-15 12:46:34 by moT moT
m1cro: in the first post
Quote:
Mark Shuttleworth (the guy behing Ubuntu)was there proposing to the sceners to create kind of demoscene pieces for the loading bar, login screen and other parts of Ubuntu.
added on the 2006-10-15 13:47:56 by the_Ye-Ti the_Ye-Ti
moT: I think you're completely wrong there, more people are probably moving from debian/slackware/gentoo to ubuntu than the other way around.
added on the 2006-10-15 14:06:10 by Sverker Sverker
I like very much the idea of Ubuntu. In my opinion the open-source thing is made for future. More and more open source programs arais, many firms stick to open source development. Open source development has more other goals than making money out of one program or put patents on it. It is a different working style if you make a program, where everybody can put his ideas in, change it or correct it.
...Ok, I just stop myself to talk about benefits of open source, but there are many and Mark is someone who wants to push this idea. However, the problem with Linux is that they have not so much full time programmer than microsoft, so where to get all the manpower you need to make a competative operation system?

Why not ask the demoscene, where there is knowledge and motivation. At least this would be a step towards more popularity. Like moT said, Ubuntu is targeting the simple people, but I think that it is still far away from this and I think that a touch some technic tricks and art will help very much.
added on the 2006-10-15 14:11:45 by spoke spoke
tribão: It really doesn't matter which distro is most famous, as long as:

- it remains free "as in freedom"
- there is always abundance of choice.

I was just adressing some people's comments which consider Ubuntu "bloated". Personally, I don't.
added on the 2006-10-15 14:33:29 by moT moT

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