I saw a video from Sun MicroSystems last year, in which they showed a demo version of a 3D desktop environment. It was really awesome and was the really 3D desktop environment. A lot of 3D desktop emulators are available currently like beryl, but they are not really 3D. Because one can’t go behind the windows, terminals etc. Believe me, Looking Glass 3D is far better than all vistas and beryls if only graphics are compared. Around two-three weeks when I was going through one of the tech magazines in library, I came across a topic which discussed desktop environments for Linux. I was surprised to see Project Looking Glass over there. Day before yesterday, I downloaded the Project Looking Glass 3D desktop environment for Linux from here.Project Looking Glass 3D desktop environment is a purely Java based desktop environment and it runs on top of Java virtual machine. It requires graphics card (at least on board). Here is a way to install nVidia drivers in Linux. The other requirement like processor and RAM are quite low and almost all systems can qualify for that. Looking Glass 3D is very easy to install. Below are the steps to install it on Fedora 7 (kernel-2.6.22.1-41.fc7, but the steps for other operating systems may be similar.
Step 1
Get lg3d–1-0-0-linux-i686-0612190943.bin from here.
Step 2
In a terminal switch to root user.
1 2 | [saini@bordeaux saini]$ su [Enter] Enter root password. |
Step 3
Move the lg3d–1-0-0-linux-i686-0612190943.bin to /usr/share/ and go to directory /usr/share/
1 2 | [root@bordeaux saini]$ mv lg3d--1-0-0-linux-i686-0612190943.bin /usr/share/ [Enter] [root@bordeaux saini]$ cd /usr/share/ [Enter] |
Step 4
Extract lg3d–1-0-0-linux-i686-0612190943.bin
[root@bordeaux share]$ bash lg3d--1-0-0-linux-i686-0612190943.bin [Enter]
The files will be extracted to /usr/share/lg3d/
Step 5
Logout and login into root’s desktop environment and go to the directory /usr/share/lg3d/bin/
[root@bordeaux root$ cd /usr/share/lg3d/bin/ [Enter]
Step 6
Execute the following command.
[root@bordeaux bin]$ bash ./postinstall [Enter]
If this command doesn’t give any error, that means you have successfully installed the Looking Glass 3D desktop environment.
Now logout and on the login screen, choose Looking Glass as the desktop environment. Just login into your account and what you will see will be more than a surprise. Below are some screenshots of my Looking Glass 3D desktop. You can browse all my screenshots here .
PS0 : It may the best 3D desktop environment but is not really usable on slower machines especially with low end graphics cards.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
@Maruti
you must
@Sandeep
It will, only if your ati drivers are working …
@Skp
hey … even i don’t use it … i just switch to it whenever i am bored of working
quite gud …
hurts, I mean hurts performance of programs 
the sad part is, graphics programmers can’t have a permanent graphics desktop
thats why using compiz-fusion, switching b/w compiz and icewm for fun & programming resp.
U have fun
….
looks cool ..gotta try it out
hey …it looks freakin awesome….does it work on ATI radeon 200m express…..i tried beryl but it does not work in ATI
sweet man, u might want to turn on anti aliasing, 2X will do and it wont hurt ur performance at all. the jagged edges on the boxes will go out then
@opensuse 10.2
hi i had some issues with lg3d
when i try to run lg3d-app it gives me the following:
Starting up Project Looking Glass…
error opening security policy file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserver/SecurityPolicy
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/Speedo, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType, removing from list!
Xlib: connection to “:0.0″ refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
/usr/bin/xhost: unable to open display “:0″
FreeFontPath: FPE “/usr/share/fonts/misc” refcount is 2, should be 1; fixing.
i tried it both as root and as a normal user
ultimately i switched to compiz-fusion..which is working great (although obviously its not truly 3d!)
@Tausheed
not sure. I have not used SuSE at all. I suspect some problem with you xorg.conf.
Very nice! will have to try it out soon
Hi everyone ,
plz guide me to uninstall this lg3d desktop effects……
@Sagar
delete /usr/share/lg3d directory.
rm -rf /usr/share/lg3d/ [Enter]
done
1. The effects can be achieved by selecting and dragging an object or by double clicking the border or by other combinations of certain keys and scroller.
2. You have to run the applications from command line.
I’ve installed it on Fedora 7 X64 and it works fine. Hectic,it certainly is. The question is what can you do with it?
I have a 1680X!050 monitor. It gives me the impression you need much higher resolution.
@Seyhan
Ahh … its not for general usage i think … because i didn’t even find sufficient things to do basic work …
and yeah the images/wallpapers are very high resolution ….
where can i find keyboard shotcuts to get all the effects to view
@Charan
i don’t have a list and i don’t even know all of them !!!
i just tried some random combination … like press control button and scroll, press control and drag the window and others …
Hello webmaster , I like your blog post expecially the article for 3d wallpapers and your post regarding Looking Glass 3D Desktop Environment on Fedora 7 looks very interesting. Nice to share it with us. I found you on Yahoo while searching for 3d wallpapers . I Just Stumble it on Friday .
I am newbie in linux and have tried step by step for looking glass and have error msg after step 6.
“You must run this script with root permissions.”. What is it mean? I have tried with my ID and SU….thanks before.
Rgds,