Sunday, January 07, 2007

Joys of a desktop in three dimensions !

Wow ! What a nice experience for my computer that the new Linux Mandriva 2007 ! the OS includes a 3D desktop supported by most graphic cards (mine is a ATI Radeon 9200). For the first time using Linux, I don't have any problems, just good impressions... you can see below some screenshots of my 3D desktop...

...when I maximize a window, i can distort it from the borders to see underneath other windows...

...when I have to many windows on one desktop, I switch to a new desktop by shipping with the mouse the window to the right or to the left. On the picture below, you can see how the desktops switch from one to another... it's like a cube, so I have four desktops... amazing, don't you think ?

... more than the 3D effects, this version, like other former versions of Linux Mandriva, can be highly personalized. You see my toolbars, one at the top, one below. The one at the top functions like the top bar in Mac OS, the one below like the Windows one. Some applets are available, like for instance a moon phase indicator that indicates when it's full moon and so on, and a world clock with the limit day/night that I like particularly.
So, if you want to try out Linux, I recommend you Mandriva 2007, maybe the most stable version I ever used. I think that Windows XP is still needed, as some software just work under this environment and some hardware (like my webcam) don't have linux drivers... and it is not going to happen tomorrow !

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