It seems like a lot of people are excited about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista OS because of the new fancy eye candy. Sure, there’s a lot more new stuff going on under the hood, but if Vista came out and it looked exactly like XP, maybe people wouldn’t care so much.
The unfortunate thing is that the fancy eye candy has some hefty system requirements. You need a DirectX9-grade video card just to enable the Aero Glass interface, and there are reports that it doesn’t run so great on some lower-end (GeForce 5200-esque) video cards. Hm.
Well, if you like your desktops fancy, but your video card says ‘Hey man, I’m not so good!’ then look no further then XGL and Novell’s latest contribution to the open-source community, Compiz. Here’s a video!
Not only is it out now, but the list of supported hardware is encouraging to those who are rocking the old school.
I don’t have a Linux installation on my computers here, although I’ve dabbled in the past. Luckily for me, a new LiveCD has been released that let’s you try out the fanciness without installing Linux at all! It’s a 450MB-ish CD image that will let you boot a complete Linux install directly off the disc, without touching your hard drive. I’m going to give it a go and let you know how it goes. 
UPDATE:
The CD worked like a champ! If you try it, make sure you read the ‘Key Shortcuts’ document on the desktop. There’s a ton of cool stuff you can do, like rotate to other virtual desktops and make windows transparent using your scroll wheel. I’m going to try it on some different hardware here, like the integrated video in the TabletPC and the Radeon 7000 in my work laptop. I’ll post an update with the results.
