HOWTO Looking Glass

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Summary

Basically, this HOWTO is about setting up Sun's Looking Glass 3D Desktop in Gentoo Linux. The goal of this HOWTO will not only be just a bunch of commands, but also provides just a little more background info. It can be skipped though, as you want.

[edit] Approach of this HOWTO

This HOWTO is written in the way that I'm also in the process of setting up Looking Glass on my computer. This approach is different then most HOWTO's, which are written after everything is done. Although the last way is more likely to render a success, my approach does offer a couple advantages as well; in the way of setting up the system, I probably will come across one (or more likely, several) pitfalls that I will need to resolve before continuing. This offers mostly first-hand support in this process.

[edit] About

Looking Glass was first developed indoors at Sun Microsystems. It was first shown at a conference in Berlin as far as I know. The reactions were so good that it suprised the Developers Team. Sun and the team made the decision to opensource Looking Glass. Things have gone fast since then. Several projects popped out of the blue, which can visited at following link.

[edit] Things to consider

Looking Glass is by no means a finished product.. Therefore, you cannot expect things from the desktop like you maybe would with other desktop environments. Looking Glass is a next gen desktop and has certain requirements before you will be able to run it. Let's take a look at following listing;

• A reasonably high clocked CPU
• A 3D graphics card (with 3D support working, so I prefer an nVidia card)
• A load of RAM

Other things that may come in handy is some experience with configuring your system, although everything listed here from commands could be defined as basic stuff.. General experience in solving your own problems is useful when you try more exotic things.

Some users report that the latest X.Org doesn't work with Looking Glass. Installing Xfree might resolve this, but as it is declared deprecated.. we'll see..

One of the best quotes I think that describes the current status is the following:

"The current iteration you are seeing is no more than proof-of-concept code. The goal is to get developers to think "what if I could ..." ~ unknown

[edit] Steps to follow

These steps are taken from the HOWTO from Prodigy44 because I'm not able to test it myself for the moment (important things that doesn't afford me to ruin my system ;-).

Make sure that you've got a Portage Overlay setup, and then download the appropriate files and place them in /usr/portage/distfiles: Though it may not be entirely a bad idea to get the Sun Download Manager first (requires RPM).

# jdk-1_5_0_04-linux-i586.bin
firefox http://tinyurl.com/7g5uq

# Linux CLASSPATH Install
# jai-1_1_2_01-lib-linux-i586.tar.gz
firefox http://tinyurl.com/bp8hl

# if you have updated portage recently, you may skip this
# java3d-1_3_2-linux-i586.zip
cd /usr/portage/distfiles
wget http://download.java.net/media/java3d/builds/release/1.3.2/java3d-1_3_2-linux-i586.zip

For more recent versions of Looking Glass, you will actually need a more recent version of java3d than the one present in Portage. Since no known overlay contains one, you will have to create manually the package for it. Here are the steps to follow:

mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/dev-java/sun-java3d-bin
cd /usr/local/portage/dev-java/sun-java3d-bin
nano -w sun-java3d-bin-1.5.0.ebuild

# Copyright 1999-2005 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header:  $

inherit java-pkg

MY_PV=${PV//./_}
MY_PV=${MY_PV//_pre/-build}
MY_IPV=${MY_PV//_/.}

DESCRIPTION="Sun Java3D API Core"
HOMEPAGE="https://j3d-core.dev.java.net/"
SRC_URI="
        amd64? (
                http://download.java.net/media/java3d/builds/release/${MY_IPV}/java3d-${MY_PV}-linux-amd64.zip
        )
        x86? (
                http://download.java.net/media/java3d/builds/release/${MY_IPV}/java3d-${MY_PV}-linux-i586.zip
        )"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86 -*"
SLOT="0"
LICENSE="sun-jrl sun-jdl"
IUSE=""
DEPEND="app-arch/unzip"
RDEPEND=">=virtual/jre-1.3"

S=${WORKDIR}/${A/.zip/}

src_unpack() {
        unpack ${A}
        cd ${S}
        unzip -q j3d-jre.zip || die
}

src_compile() { :; }

src_install() {
        dodoc COPYRIGHT.txt README.txt

        java-pkg_dojar lib/ext/*.jar
        java-pkg_doso lib/${ARCH/x86/i386}/*.so
}

pkg_postinst() {
        einfo "This ebuild installs into /opt/${PN} and /usr/share/${PN}"
        einfo 'To use you need to pass the following to java'
        einfo '-Djava.library.path=$(java-config -i sun-java3d-bin) -cp $(java-config -p sun-java3d-bin)'
}

ebuild sun-java3d-bin-1.5.0.ebuild digest

Then, following steps should be followed:

echo "dev-java/sun-jdk" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask
echo "dev-java/sun-jdk ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

echo dev-java/sun-java3d-bin >> /etc/portage/package.unmask
echo dev-java/sun-java3d-bin ~x86 >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

emerge -n dev-java/sun-jdk
emerge -n dev-java/sun-jai-bin
emerge -n dev-java/sun-java3d-bin
emerge -n app-shells/tcsh
emerge hsc

And type following commands:

mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/x11-lg3d/lookingglass
cat - >  /usr/local/portage/x11-lg3d/lookingglass/lookingglass-0.7.1.ebuild

Copy/Paste the following into that file (CTRL-D when finished):

# Copyright 1999-2004 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $

DESCRIPTION="Looking Glass - 3D windows manager written in Java"
HOMEPAGE="https://lg3d.dev.java.net/"
MY_PV=${PV/0.7.1/fcs-rel-0-7-1-linux-i686-0510281810}
SRC_URI="https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/files/documents/1834/23193/lg3d-${MY_PV}.tar.gz"
LICENSE="GPL"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~x86"

#DEPEND=">=dev-java/sun-jdk-1.5.0_beta2
#dev-java/jai
#dev-java/sun-java3d # does not exist jet, but dev-java/blackdown-java3d is in portage
#app-shells/tcsh"

src_install() {
   cd $P/work/
   dodir /usr/share
   cp -R lg3d ${D}/usr/share
   cd ${D}/usr/share/lg3d/bin
   dodir /bin
   echo "#!/bin/sh" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-session
   echo "cd /usr/share/lg3d/bin" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-dev
   echo "./lg3d-dev" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-dev
   echo "#!/bin/sh" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-session
   echo "cd /usr/share/lg3d/bin" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-session
   echo "./lg3d-session" >> ${D}/bin/lg3d-session
   chmod +x ${D}/bin/lg3d-*
   dodir /etc/X11/Sessions
   dosym /bin/lg3d-session /etc/X11/Sessions/lookingglas
}


pkg_postinst() {
   echo ""
   echo "To run Looking Glass, the screen must be in 24-bit mode"
   echo "To run in window, run lg3d-dev"
   echo "To run as a session, run lg3d-session"
   echo ""
}

Let's make a new ebuild from that file, then install the ebuild and ignore warnings::

ebuild /usr/local/portage/x11-lg3d/lookingglass/lookingglass-0.7.1.ebuild digest
echo "x11-lg3d/lookingglass ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge -av x11-lg3d/lookingglass

Finally we must fix some linking problems. File /usr/share/lg3d/bin/setup is a generic setup file that is source'd at each execution of lg3d-dev and lg3d-session so we edit it with information about java3d:

echo setenv CLASSPATH \"\$\{CLASSPATH\}:\`java-config -p sun-java3d-bin\`\" >> /usr/share/lg3d/bin/setup
echo setenv LG_SETTINGS \"\$\{LG_SETTINGS\} -Djava.library.path=\`java-config -i sun-java3d-bin\`\" >> /usr/share/lg3d/bin/setup