Hi,

I suggest you take a look at XPde - a fully working window manager and desktop environment, with accompanied system tools (task manager, control panel, file manager, calculator, network monitor etc). XPde was developed in Object Pascal using Kylix. Here are some info and screenshots [http://xpde.holobit.net/shots.php]. For years I've been meaning to port this over to Free Pascal and fpGUI.

Another Window Manager implemented in pure Object Pascal is fpwm (available on SourceForge). This is Alpha stage though, but I do have screenshots I made showing the old version (in a subdirectory in the repository) running on my Linux system.

Neither of these two are 3D though, but it should be a very good start to get a project going.

Speaking of 3D and OpenGL. I would personally opt to rather use SDL instead of OpenGL directly. SDL will still give you 3D hardware support (including a software renderer etc), but the API should be much easier to use. SDL has also proven very successful in many commercial Linux games (remember Loki Software), so it should definitely be up to the task.

Another alternative might be to use ORCA 3D (included with the Lazarus fork, CodeTyphon). Though I'm still under the impression that this is a rebranded illegal copy of the FireMonkey predecessor (bought and owned by Embarcadero). [please correct me if I am wrong about ORCA]

Regards,
- Graeme -

AFAIR, I've developed x11 part of wm :))) and some other modules like system viewer :) .... and yes, I have same thoughts about port but no free time to start that.

zeljko

Zeljko wrote

AFAIR, I've developed x11 part of wm :))) and some other modules like system viewer :)

It's good to know there are still some of the original XPde developers around. I really liked that project - still do, but unfortunately I don't run Linux any more (moved to FreeBSD some years ago).

My original idea was to port it and make sure it supports FreeBSD as a first class citizen, so that OS can get its own desktop environment - much like what the newish project Lumina Desktop is doing now for FreeBSD. But with FPC+fpGUI being so good at cross platform support, it should work equally well on FreeBSD and Linux.

.... and yes, I have same thoughts about port but no

free time to start that.

If either of us do find the time to start it, we should let the other person know. It is a massive project, and collaboration is vital.

Regards,
- Graeme -