I’ve been trying out a few new Linux features lately. First, kernel 2.6.20 is shipping with kvm which includes support for the new virtualization instructions on recent processors. This is great because I can use the kvm-modified version of qemu to boot other Linux or Windows XP images while in Linux. Emulating Linux is nice for debugging those kernel bugs that lockup the box, while Windows could theoretically be useful for reverse engineering drivers. Qemu also sets up a NAT transparently so you can easily use the network once you’re in the guest OS. No news to anyone that’s used vmware, but this is free, and a heckuva lot faster than all-software emulation. Pictured is my little XP-under-Linux test:
Also, I’m playing with Xgl a bit. This is the X server that’s built on top of OpenGL, providing window managers the ability to add eye candy to mundane things like dragging windows around. My laptop JustWorked with the builtin i945 graphics chip, which is interesting because glx still claims to be using the software renderer. Coupled with beryl, all of your virtual desktops get mapped to faces of a cube, so when you Ctrl-Alt-(left/right/mouse) you can rotate the cube to find the appropriate workspace. The window manager has active corners like OSX which default to exposé-like features. When you drag around windows under this thing, they have a cute little warping animation, and when you bring something to the front, the other windows become transparent. It’s still a little buggy and I’m not sure that I won’t find the eye-candy ridiculously annoying at some point, but for now it’s a cool toy. A screenshot wouldn’t do it justice, so visit youtube for demos of it by unaccountably shirtless dudes.