As revealed yesterday, Mandriva today released a special version of its Mandriva One 2007 distribution, using the ‘Metisse’ 3D environment (which is actually not a 3D environment). “Metisse is a window manager developed by the In Situ project. Available under the General Public Licence exclusively for Linux, Metisse differs from a classic 3D desktop (‘the cube’) in the way that it offers innovative windows interactions, thus enforcing work efficiency.”
it’s nice they try new stuff, but really, it’s useless… pretty much like compiz, actually.
ok, it’s not all bad, a few things can be used in some rare cases, and they certainly look cool – but again, apart from the experimentation, how are they going to be usefull?
maybe something comes out of this, and we can thank mandriva for supporting it, sure. let’s hope so, then.
Looks cool. And totally unnecessary.
I’m used to be a Mandrake fan.
The visual drag-n-drop looks pretty useful (especially for new computer users–it’s just like leafing through a stack op papers), but I’d rather see this being implemented as part of Compiz.
> Mandriva-2007.0-One-Metisse.i586.iso (701MB, MD5).
Can’t burn to CD with this iso, 701MB>700
Use DVD-R?
Hmm… I usually don’t have problems burning cd’s with ISO files slightly larger than 700 MB.
Most CDRs are actually about 703MB. You should be fine…
I’ve played with the Metisse set up before. Big Linux 2.0 had it on their liveCD. Unfortunately it was all in Portuguese. But it was kind of cool. This was a long time ago though, nice to see someone else using it, though is Mandriva just using it so that they’re not another “Me too!” on compiz / beryl?
Available under the General Public Licence exclusively for Linux….
I thought Linux is all about freedom? Sry, GNU/Linux.
Exclusive is the right word! Until you port it, it can only run on X/Linux
And on Mandriva’s metisse product page it states:
Available under the GPL Licence and in exclusivity for Mandriva Linux
GPL and exclusivity on some distro don’t walk too well together:)
They probably mean that Mandriva Linux is the only to integrate that at the moment. Not that it will stay the only one in the futur.
Linux will certainly have the best looking desktop and with the most choices available. With Beryl/Compiz and now Metisse, it’s finally happening for desktop Linux. While many of these 3D desktop effects are superfluous eye candy with no real added value, they do LOOK cool. And if there’s one thing Microsoft and Apple have proven, form (i.e., eye candy) wins out over function hands down. Take the iPod for example: there are many mp3 players on the market that beat it in features and functionality but none of them have captured the “coolness” factor like Apple’s offering. Having a lot of options is good early on as it promotes competition and rapid development. Soon, however, the creme de la creme will be adopted and the rest will simply fade away. May the best features win! I completely expect Metisse functionality to be present in a not-too-distant version of Compiz or Beryl. Mandriva has at least introduced this to the masses for bug testing and improvement. Good job Mandriva!
Edited 2007-01-25 20:54
Apple doesn’t just have eye candy. They have a sense of a clean style and smoothness that’s not easy to match. They have whole armies of professional photoshop users and Hollywood behind them. They know what’s the “in” thing.
Metisse predates compiz and beryl by at least 6 months, probably more. Big Linux 2.1 had it.
http://www.biglinux.com.br/
I still love BeOS because of it’s superior window managment and interface. But many people say it doesn’t look good anymore, IMO it’s a very simple and clean interface.
Burned and booted fine, but said my machine didn’t support the 3D Desktop effects… weird because i tried a Mandriva 2007 LiveCD a couple of months ago and worked then (wasn’t Metisse of course). The laptop has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700.
It seems somewhat related to the “Focus follows mouse” principle, at least the focused window shall not be toplevel.
This is a peculiarity of X windows ( I remember I first saw it more than 10 years ago on OpenLook Sun Sparc workstations…), I miss it daily at work with Windows.
Is there any poll on the ratio of users of “focus follows mouse” versus “click to focus” on Linux ?