Hi everyone,
Welcome back to the MID4Linux. It has been a long time since I had the change to chat with you a little and I also had to come clean on the future of my project.
First, the project is not canceled and I hope to be able to prove it to you soon. Call it semi-hibernation. However, for those who really want to know, I had to lower my time allocation on the MID4Linux Project for personal reasons. Things are getting back to normal now and you should notice it quite soon.
Having said that, for the last few months now, I was able to maintain a closed distribution (underground release) with some selected beta testers out there on the Net. My thanks go to all the testers for their patience and dedication!
The real focus of MID4Linux:
Remember, the focus of this Project is to first, provide a compatible implementation of the original Indigo Magic Desktop or IRIX Interactive Desktop for the Linux platform. Second, allowing a smoother migration (transparent in many cases) of existing production environments to a cheaper and cost-effective platform (Linux) without having to retrained end-users. Third, existing IRIX applications can be ported to Linux much more easily — allowing companies to leverage existing code which in several cases represents a large amount of time and money that can be saved.
About the future of the MID4Linux Project:
1) Most of the source code will be available soon (which means the 5Dwm Window Manager environment, the SGI Motif standard widgets and the toolchest application)
2) Things are moving faster and there are fewer bugs everyday. Meaning, I am cooking a NEW version of MID4Linux soon.
3) A full version is underway on Linux ia64 Itanium. I still need to test some performance related stuff! BTW, I am looking for an Itanium box (loaner). Anyone?
4) A new GTK+ theme engine, which make used of the same X/Motif rendering code is on the drawing board….
5) A professional version of MID4Linux will be made available some time in 2K4 for those who wants to migrate IRIX applications or are serious about performance, FX houses for examples. The pro. version will include advanced features like Overlay Plane support and the complete Desktop Environment with source code and headers… Pricing information will be made available in due time.
I have listed below some of the Project highlights:
1) SGI Motif look and feel is 99% finish. Meaning that only a few standard widgets require my attention!
2) SGI Color Scheme is working quite nice and I have some nice shots for you in the screenshots page.
3) 5Dwm Window Manager is OK for launch. Refer to the Roadmap page for more details regarding features and schedules.
4) Toolchest is finished too and now supports an auxiliary menu.
5) Laucheffect with sound (sparkling effect when an application is launched) is finished
6) Cool desktop applications to bundle with IMD (gmemusage, gr_osview, xmcd, xmmix, ddd, mgdiff, xconfirm, xmms, xpdf, mgv and many others) Most of these applications have been modified in order to nicely integrate into the MID4Linux Desktop environment.
7) Icon Vector library is working fine and will be integrated with my new version of iconCatalog and file-manager. Point to note, my vector library make use of OpenGL hardware acceleration (when available) or fail back to an hybrid OpenGL/X Primitives. The name of the game here is maximum speed with minimal CPU resource utilization.
8) A new framework has been created to facilitate IRIX applications migration to Linux.
9) Open Inventor toolkit is also available and has been modified slightly 😉
10) Icon Catalog development is underway
11) The file-manager is underway too and it is really fast with OGL acceleration.
12) Special enhancements are made in both SGI Motif and 5Dwm for Overlay Plane supports and beta testers will be needed soon.
13) SGI is drafting a license agreement allowing me to work on MID4Linux.
14) A totally new set of GTK+ skins now provides a uniform look and feel.
Thanks for you continuous interest in MID4Linux Project and I hope to hear from you soon.