With Suns decision at the end of June to release its prototype three-dimensional desktop environment, known as Project Looking Glass, under the GPL, the flashy project took the first step toward being more than a fancy trade-show demo.
After downloading and installing Release 0.5 of Looking Glass, I can report the project has matured enough to be a fancy demo right in my own cubicle.
Click here to view a slideshow of Looking Glass
Following good instructions at https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/lg3d-getting-started.html, I installed the project code on a machine running Fedora Core 2 and was able to pull up a mini-3-D desktop in which I could pan across the background and flip windows sideways instead of minimizing them.
As fun as that was, its going to take a lot of work for Project Looking Glass to develop into something that sees common use. Suns going to have to convince the GNOME Project that a 3-D branch of its desktop environment makes sense and should be pursued, and Looking Glass supporters are going to have to get developers excited about building 3-D into their applications. Right now, the sample apps section of the Looking Glass project site is empty.
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