Misc. Catch all category Welcome to MaXX Interactive Desktop Not just a theme... Photo Gallery Contacting Us Who the heck is Eric Masson? Old Documentation Roadmap Welcome to MaXX Interactive Desktop “ Indigo MAX IMPACT v2.1.1 is now available >> Link to Release Notes << MaXX Interactive Desktop is the little brother of the great SGI Desktop on IRIX MaXXdesktop v2.1.1 running in Modern Look & Feel with Sargent SGI Scheme (4K @60Hz) Introduction The MaXX Interactive Desktop a.k.a. MaXXdesktop is the continuation of the 5Dwm project released many years back. So don't be mistaken, there is only one real re-implementation of the IRIX Interactive Desktop found on SGI systems, and it's MaXXdesktop! MaXXdesktop is a true re-implementation of the "SGI Desktop" with the added benefits of using a modern software stack of highly tuned loosely-coupled components delivering maximum performance and stability while using as little resources as possible. We believe that high performance computing and energy friendly are not mutually exclusive. What if you could run applications in a smarter, greener and sustainable way? MaXXdesktop aims at improving just that, do more with less. While respecting the original retro CLASSIC SGI look and feel, which is very important for us to get it right, we created a newer and more modern user experience called the MODERN look that feels like a natural evolution of the original SGI look, as if SGI did it themselves throughout the years perfecting an already pretty awesome recipe. The MODERN look still supports SGI Color Schemes but introduce Unicode and UTF-8 support, anti-aliased font rendering, more hardware acceleration and a new virtual-desktop manager. The user can switch between looks with one mouse-click, now that's cool. Goals and Features List We believe in the need of a highly tuned workstation environment where performance, robustness, low resources consumption are at the core of everything. Here are the goals we want to achieve and features that makes a great modern desktop: Lean, very fast and robust. Basically MaXXdesktop gets out of your way. Smart and efficient multi-cores workload management with CPU and Core partitioning which help reduce process bouncing of CPU cores and computation resources allocation/partitioning translate in better throughput (MaXXscope). Built on solid and time proven foundations. Desktop Applications are distributed as self contained AppImages. Provides a robust modern and high performance asynchronous multi-threaded messaging sub-system (with Shared Memory support and Zero copy principle for local communications) for fast and efficient inter- processes communications (MaXXlinks). Based on a modular microservices like architecture that allow decentralization of core desktop services as we rapidly moving toward containerization for better security. Modern Configuration Management sub-system with both a command line interface (CLI) or C/C++/Java API for easy application integration (MaXXsettings). Highly focused on facilitating quick and easy access to your content with fast content previewers right from the file-manager. Leverage hardware acceleration and optimization for CPU and GPU. Centralized system monitoring sub-system (MaXXmonitor). HiDPI supports for X/Motif applications and easy presets control for applications. Much needed MotifTM face-lift and modernization of the ViewKit framework with new modern components that are fully integrated with all MaXX Desktop sub-systems. Developer friendly with integration to , CLion, Intelli-J or Eclipse IDEs which translate into building better and faster applications. To support multiple CPU architecture (x86, Arm and RISC-V) To run on multiple OS: Linux, FreeBSD, Windows10 and MacOS (darwin). To provide a source code compatibility for IRIX visual applications. >> More details on what MaXXdesktop is made of Installation Guides MaXXdesktop Development Documentation Our Mission More for your creativity. Our mission is to bring back this great user experience which focused on performance, stability and productivity while sporting a smooth-clean-minimalism look and feel with low-resources consumption.smart A and green Desktop that puts the user's application in the forefront. We believe in a High Performance Desktop Environment that provides the right set of tools to maximize creativity and productivity without sacrificing your system resources to some eye candy nonsense. Again, less is more... And it keeps you focused. From the Ground Up Our design philosophy is simple, do more with less... The MaXXdesktop is designed from the ground up for speed, fast/responsive, lightweight/simplicity over eye- candidness, but more importantly, to get the heck out of your way... The nameMaXX Interactive doesn't mean maximum visual interaction, which are distractions or so what we call, UI noises. It's means maximum creativity with interactive assistance from the Desktop. In many ways, it's made for you and your brain so that it can relax, focus on let the creative juice flowing with far fewer distractions. We see desktop notifications in a very different way, but this is for another discussion. In short, the MaXXdesktop let you focus on the creative tasks ahead without interference or visual distractions. Experience Matters Our team is sharing the same vision of making use of the right set of technologies with industry proven best practices and guidelines to build the right software, the right way. We aim at providing a consistent and pleasant user experience built on top of modern and stable foundations. Every good and useful piece of tech deserves to be future-proof and this is where several decades of experience in building battle-proven mission critical systems for high performance Enterprise class applications comes in. If it's architect-ed properly, it can evolve without breaking apart! Is MaXX Desktop for you? MaXX Desktop's typical users are old IRIX users/sysadmins, Computer Graphics Artists, Motion Pictures and Special Effects Studios, Software/Game Developers, Visualization/Simulation, Virtual Reality power-users or Oil and Gas research to name a few. MaXXdesktop is also for anyone who wants get a break from all the surrounding noises and create stuff while sporting a very unique/cool daily driver. If it is the case, then MaXX is for you. Navigation This site is powered by BookStack (a type of Wiki engine) and you can navigate it by using the upper-right links 'Shelves and Books'. You may use the search bar on top or the convenient links below. Documentation Software New Stuff Image Gallery Hints and Shortcuts MaXXdesktop 2.1.1 What's New Installation Guides What's Next... Not just a theme... GitLab Repos Useful Stuff Open-source GitLab Post Installation and Customization Private GitLab - Invitation only. F.A.Q. SGI Special License Agreement However we are in the process of opening it Contacting Us and moving to a community-driven model. Development Stuff MaXXdesktop Development The MaXXdesktop team Not just a theme... Here's the breakdown of what makes The MaXX Interactive Desktop a true successor of the great IRIX Interactive Desktop only found on SGI systems and not just a theme or skin on top of an existing window manager. As per the detail below, you will realize the extent of which it took to implement a true IRIX Interactive Desktop experience and to continue its evolution as if SGI was still in business... At the heart of any SGI system is theIRIX operating system, the IRIX Interactive Desktop a.k.a. IID and its 4Dwm window manager which was an enhanced version of Motif™window manager. Similarly the MaXX Interactive Desktop sits on top of the operating system, has its own 4Dwm compatible window manager called 5Dwm which is based on OpenMotif window manager. The development of 5Dwm started as early as March 2000 and was entirely done by Eric Masson in his free time. 5Dwm provides an identical user experience to 4Dwm and is even compatible with 4Dwm's protocols and configuration files. 5Dwm comes with its tellwmown and telldesktop command tools, also found on IRIX. 5Dwm is lean, fast and ultra responsive. It supports multi-screens, HiDPI resolutions, UTF-8 encoding, Asian fonts and can use FreeType font rendering for crisp texts if the user desires. IRIX Interactive Desktop running on a SGI system. The distinct SGI look and feel was powered by SGI Schemes and it was specific to SGI systems, until the MaXX desktop comes along. SGI Schemes are based on X11 Resources mechanism and C Preprocesspor allowing the definition of standardization of colors, widget sizes, margins, alignments, fonts and other UI behaviours throughout the user experience. Those settings are auto-magically injected into every X11/Xt/Motif application at startup. The changes required to support this "injection" goes deep into the X Toolkit Intrinsics Library (libXt) and therefore required our own version of libXt called libXt-maxx. Fun fact, this is how SGI did their own implementation as well. We even reuse the SGI Scheme files in our implementation and MaXXdesktop distributions. Early version of MaXXdesktop running on a Linux system demonstrating SGI Schemes. The SGI-Motif library found on SGI systems offered a nicer+smoother look and feel than the regular Motif from Sun/DEC/HP. This lead to the creation of our own SGI-Motif libraries for version 2.1.32 (same as IRIX) and 2.3.8 (for MaXXdesktop Modern Look) allowing a drop-in binary replacements on most Linux Distributions without sacrificing stability and compatibility. The Viewkit™ Motif C++ application development framework is at the heart of many commercial SGI applications and even part of the actual SGI Desktop applications. The initial plan was to offer ICS's Viewkit™ license (for a fee) but sadly it failed short right after SGI declared bankruptcy and the several attempts to resurrect the company. ICS is a really cool company by the way and we kept a good relation.