Xrdesktop

2019: Announcement

At the end of July, 2019 the Collabora company announced the open source software Xrdesktop which is intended for start of Linux in virtual reality. The project is sponsored by the developer of the games Valve who repeatedly showed interest in the Linux operating system.

Thanks to Xrdesktop it is possible to transfer a working environment of GNOME and KDE to VR Wednesday, to start applications and to work with them by means of the special VR controller replacing a computer mouse. This controller allows to distance, bring closer, increase and to overturn windows of programs in a three-dimensional format.

The Gnome environment in the virtual reality implemented through Xrdesktop

The instruction for start of Xrdesktop  in GNOME and KDE is uploaded to the website GitLab. Packets are available to installation through  PPA  for the Ubuntu or AUR distribution kit   for Arch Linux.

Xrdesktop supports HTC Vive and Valve Index headsets for which are developed by Linux drivers. Developers did not publish system requirements to software by the beginning of August, 2019.

Collabora also offered own implementation of the standard open source of OpenXR — Monado. It is supposed that the technology can become a link for creation of VR content for Linux which will be available to users in shops, like Valve Steam. The Xrdesktop project is constructed on OpenXR.

As notes ZDNet, by the beginning of August, 2019 Xrdesktop is in process of improvement, and for normal work of software with graphical environment X11, the Wayland protocol and a window manager the special graphic driver and some settings in GNOME and KDE are necessary. However this project became a big step forward to the fact that the traditional working environment of Linux worked in virtual reality. Integration of Xrdesktop with window managers provides "mirroring contents of windows expanded reality (XR) and the synthesized input from a desktop using actions of XR".^[1]

Notes