I think I’m going to like Looking Glass as a GUI front end for Ubuntu, but…
…NOT on the Ubuntu box I initially tried it out on. OK, here’s the deal: Looking Glass is a Linux desktop environment GUI that depends on LOTS of Java. In fact, just installing the thing requires three of four signoffs on Sun Java development licenses. IOW, there’s a pretty high overhead. Maybe not as high as with “Vista Oo-La-La” version *heh* but much steeper hardware requirements than the box I tried it out on. OK, so it was a relatively “old” box–1.3Ghz Intel, 384MB RAM and only a 16MB vidcard. Pretty low hardware specs.
But keep in mind, those “low” hardware specs are plenty good enough to drive Ubuntu 6.10 (Well, Xubuntu, Ubuntu using an Xfce Desktop environment, which is less hardware-demanding than straight Ubuntu using either GNOME or KDE), almost blazingly fast. And the Xfce desktop environment has some pretty snazzy visuals, easily matching or exceeding the best GUI look/feel that WinXP can offer and as nice as Apple OSX desktops I’ve seen.
But if someone wants to have the cool GUI look and feel of the most expensive, hardware-demanding new Windows Vista, without donning the Windows Vista straightjacket, the Looking Glass environment running on your favorite Linux looks like the way to go. IF your box has the hardware to run it. The box I initially tried it out on loaded the environment nicely, and the 3D graphics, neato-keano 3D file folders, desktop navigation, transparent folders, menus, etc., all displayed, but navigating/using those elements was painfully slow.
However… on an old, old PIII-500 with 512MB RAM and a 64MB vidcard, running plain old Ubuntu, Looking Glass was usable. Unfortunately, that PC is a workhorse Win2K box I use for most of my Windows testing, service, etc., so I don’t often have it running Linux (Although I have thought of slapping another IDE controller in it along with another DASD to use in a multiboot config).
But the fact that Looking Glass is usable on a system with such low hardware specs tells me that just a little more memory and a better vidcard (with the 64MB vidcard, LG is usable, but I suspect more video memory would be better) would be about all it’d take to give me all the “Gee-whiz” factor of Windows Vista Premium desktops I’ve played with, without having to have a GB or more of memory and a whopping huge frypan of a vidcard.
Advantage: Linux. 🙂