Amazing Linux screenshot...

[Kesereti]

See, I see nothing wrong with a bit of eye candy...the most important thing is that an app does the job it's supposed to do well, of course, but if there are two apps that satisfy that portion for a given need, I'm more inclined to go with a 'prettier' app when I choose which to use =)

[lurid]

Eye candy is neat but isn't that practical for real work. However, X as it is does real work just fine, but the big push for Linux right now is desktop use, which means eye candy. Everyone has it. People expect it. Now personally, I like the hacks in xterms better than true transparency because I don't like my whole app 'greyed out' I prefer just a section of it be translucent. DirectFB is a neat idea and does transparancies well, but its limited to the strength of a specific fb driver. The vesa driver sucks, to be quite frank, and that is what most nVidia users have to use.

TransluXent is a good idea, but its buggy and slow. Not to mention the hoops you have to go through to get it working. Good idea, bad implementation. The use of OpenGL has to be more transparent (no pun intended), it can't suck down resources like you're playing UT. OSXs' Quartz is the best I've seen so far in this direction. I didn't care for the videos I saw of Longhorn using the OpenGL interface, but it shows thats where Microsoft is leaning also.

The problem is that OSX is kinda old now and MS hasn't really realesed a new product in a while. Linux is starting to get a foothold and its bolstered by these conditions in software right now. But if Linux doesn't develop something to compete with the UI's of OSX and the upcomming Longhorn, its adoption to the desktop is going to take a major hit.
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Go find a cheerleader and saw her legs off. - Nny

[Kesereti]