[qvwm-e:00362] Re: qvwm development

Hello All,

You are right Chris, the qvwm portion will be written based upon  C++ 
and I hope to have the basic site in place over the next few days on 
Sourceforge so that things can get moving along as there is now starting 
to be a lot of interest in this project by many people.

It's a very ambitious project that has been in the design phase for a 
very long time while looking for various characteristics that would be 
added. There is still a VERY long way to go and things will be broken 
down in sub-project sections like "Common GUI", "3D Interface", "World 
Designers", "Theme Designers", "Tools & Utilities", "Emulators", 
"Graphical OS Installer", "OS Base design", "Web Site Portal Design", 
etc....  and hopefully will be able to find interested people to help 
manage the various sections.

I truly hope that there will be some great interest so that we can make 
this project go far together.

Well, here is my initial write up on InterCruise Linux and am sure that 
there is much more that I could have added.

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InterCruise Linux © -- "Where Virtual Reality Sets the Standard"

Originally conceived in 1999, InterCruise Linux, initially named 
InterCruise-3D, was brought about as an attempt to bring users into the 
3D Virtual Reality world. Recent advancements in hardware & software 
technologies over the last few years have now made it possible to bring 
InterCruise into the computer world. InterCruise Linux is also an 
attempt to rapidly increase the popularity of the Linux operating system 
for existing Microsoft Windows users by providing a secure, stable, and 
familiar environment for them to enjoy, and utilize, no matter whether 
they are at home, on the road, or at the office. Moreover, InterCruise 
is also designed to introduce the concepts of true "World-masters" as 
opposed to "web-masters" in that in addition to the standard desktop 
features along with attempting to homogenize the way that users run 
various applications from currently different operating systems., the 
user will actually be residing in a 3D environment and will be able to 
simply navigate to various applications, directories, or even networking 
and the web in a cleanly 3 dimensional manner. Connected users can meet 
in a Virtual Reality 3D "common" area simply by walking from their 
"home" world in to the local or distributed Virtual Reality world which 
could be on the local system, a cluster of machines, or even over the 
Internet. InterCruise Linux will further seek to extend itself onto the 
Internet community by providing seamless transitions with the concept of 
"World browsers" as opposed to "Web browsers" by allowing users to also 
interact with "World servers" as opposed to "Web Servers" in a true 3D 
community.

Educators, and researchers, for example will be able to come together in 
their selected InterCruise Virtual Reality world and collaborate while 
using virtual instrumentation to possibly analyze dynamically 
fluctuation graphs, charts, or other simulations that are actively 
running. This could be extended to teaching students online and other 
collaborative efforts from businesses to online games.

A typical scenario for an InterCruise user might proceed like something 
along these lines. They login to their machine and, based upon their 
initial user settings, will see a standard MS Windows "Look-a-like" 
desktop. They could start applications as in any normal fashion, or they 
could possibly trigger a "hot key" sequence and simply back away from 
their desktop and move around their virtual world. Within their virtual 
world, they could easily select applications which could be denoted by 
animated "objects" after which the application would start executing as 
normal. Moving through the network file systems and even the Internet 
would proceed in a similar fashion as within their local worlds.

Another great feature of InterCruise Linux will be the transparent 
nature in which users will be able to run Linux, MS Windows, Macintosh, 
and other various popular operating systems applications simply by 
executing them in a common manner. InterCruise Linux will distinguish as 
to which emulator to start, if any, proceed to run the application.

Benefits of using InterCruise Linux will be in the stability and power 
of Linux along with the added features that it does not suffer from and 
which can be seen by operating systems like MS Windows. In particular 
the enormous invasion of viruses and slow responsiveness because of GUI 
& Kernel integrations.

The birth of a revolutionary new operating system design is filled with 
many challenges. This can also be said for the InterCruise project.

InterCruise will be a very specialized Linux Distribution that will meet 
the following needs:

1. Common Desktop MS Windows (similar to XP possibly) GUI interface - To 
ease the transition for existing Windows users over to Linux. (But more 
powerful and stable) [ Will probably use QVWM as the base WM as we want 
to move away from the large KDE and Gnome interfaces. Small, clean, and 
fast is the goal here.]

2. Interactive 3D Virtual Reality Environment - The Desktop GUI will 
interface easily into a extensible 3D system environment. (Initially 
using Open Scene Graph & ODE) [ Many additional loader and a stable view 
to be written still. ]

3. Latest Kernel Linux Backend - Being built from the base Mandrake 
distribution and possibly with the SE Linux security system integrated 
by default.

4. Transparently run Linux, Apple, MS Windows, etc.. applications via 
built-in emulators and the Wine project. (Bringing together the best of 
many worlds into one)

5. Selective Initial packages - Only the best user choice applications 
will be included in the distribution to keep it tight and clean.

6. Provide Security & Servers like MySQL, Apache, Samba, Network Block 
Devices, Clustering, Anti-Virus Control, Enterprise Volume Manager, Jail 
Manager, etc....

7. Simplicity for users to install, and use so that they can work and 
play in an operating system built to meet their needs.

Effectively we are trying to build a Linux foundation competitor to MS 
Windows products that utilize the powerful features of Linux without the 
shortcomings of MS Windows.

InterCruise Linux will initially be constructed from a stripped down 
version of the Mandrake Linux 10.0 distribution and have only a very 
select set of applications needed to get the OS up and running. We will 
proceed to establish refinements to the operating system as development 
proceeds and developers join the project to work on specific areas of 
InterCruise. The method of installation will be the normal Cd's, FTP, 
etc... methods that are currently employed by the Mandrake Linux install 
system.

In this particular version of Linux, we are going with the approach of 
not overloading the user with too many options at installation time so 
that they can add applications as needed. In essence, all client side 
versions will basically get the same small initial install and the user 
can add packages as needed.

This operating system will be licensed under GPL, as are many other 
Linux distributions, and will have mailing lists, RSYNC and/or CVS 
snapshot versions for contributing developers to work on and help with 
improvements.
Any sells will be based upon the Mandrake business model in that we 
might look into offering support services for businesses, and sells of 
Cd's or books to cover developer and operating expenses in the very 
distant future. At this current point we are looking to get the Linux 
community and graphical designers involved in the initial development so 
that we may start our journey moving closer to an initial release.

Truly a large project and we will need everyones help to make it a great 
success.

There is much more that can be said at to the potential development, and 
utilization's, for InterCruise Linux though we will explore these 
options as this distribution evolves into a stable and productive member 
of the home, the office, and more importantly the Linux community.

Regards,
Lonnie Cumberland

InterCruise Linux © -- "Where Virtual Reality Sets the Standard"
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I hope not to get flamed too much over this, but it's a project that I 
have been designing for a very long time now and I think that it will be 
very beneficial to the Linux, and Computer users community.

Sincerely,
Lonnie Cumberland

Chris Sorenson wrote:

> Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
>
>>
>> If the list is interested in hearing more about "InterCruise Linux", 
>> it's goals, and how a re-vitalized development of qvwm will fit into 
>> the scheme of things then let me know and I will post a short write 
>> up that I recently made on it.
>>
>
> What language are you going to use? C++ perhaps? And if so are you 
> going to use the UML for design? It's pretty handy for large projects, 
> like yours is obviously going to be...
>
>