Welcome to MaXX Interactive Desktop

MaXX Interactive Desktop is the little brother of the great SGI Desktop on IRIX



MaXX Desktop v2.1.1 running in Modern Look & Feel with Sargant SGI Scheme (4K @60Hz)

Introduction

The MaXX Interactive Desktop a.k.a. MaXX Desktop 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 MaXX Desktop!

MaXX Desktop 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 and services delivering maximum performance, scalability, flexibility and stability while using as little resources as possible. We believe that high performance and energy friendly computing are not mutually exclusive. What if you could run applications in a smarter, greener and sustainable way? MaXX Desktop aims at improving just that, do more with less.

While respecting the retro SGI look and feel (which is very important for us to get it right), we also expanded and built on top of those solid foundations creating a new contemporary modern user experience aka the modern look. The CLASSIC look is the original SGI Desktop look and feel. However we want the MODERN look, to be/feel like a natural evolution of the original SGI look, as if SGI did it themselves throughout several years perfecting an already pretty awesome recipe. The MODERN look still supports SGI Color Schemes and introduce UTF-8 support, anti-aliased font rendering, more hardware acceleration and a new virtual-desktop manager. The use switch between looks with one mouse-click, now that's cool.

The MaXX Desktop is a highly tuned workstation environment and here's why:

It's lean, very fast and robust. Basically MaXX Desktop gets out of your way.

Smart multi-cores workload processing management and partitioning of CPU resources helps reducing processes bouncing of your CPU cores all the time, translate in better throughput (MaXX Scope).

Built on solid and time proven foundations.

At its core MaXX Desktop uses a robust modern asynchronous POSIX multi-threaded messaging sub-system (with Shared Memory support) for fast and efficient inter-processes communications (MaXX GPES).

Based on a modular micro-services architecture that allow decentralization of core desktop services and moving toward containerization.

Modern Configuration Management sub-system with both a command line interface (CLI) or C/C++/Java API for easy application integration (MaXX Settings).

Highly focused on facilitating quick and easy access to your 2D/3D/Media/Code content with fast content preview right from the file-manager.

Leverage hardware acceleration on both CPU and GPU.

Centralized system monitoring sub-system (MaXX Monitor).

HiDPI supports for X/Motif applications and easy presets control for applications.

Much needed Motif TM face-lift and modernization of the ViewKit framework with new modern components that are fully integrated with all MaXX Desktop sub-systems.

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 integrations to VSCode, CLION, Inteli-J and Eclipse IDEs which translate into building leaner and faster applications in record time.

IMPORTANT: the 5dwm.org website is not associated with us anymore and we do not endorse its content, although it's ours and was miss-appropriated from us a few years ago.

>> More details on what MaXX Desktop is made of



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. A smart 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 non-sense. Again, less is more... And it keeps you focused.



From the Ground Up

Our design philosophy is simple, do more with less...

The MaXX Desktop 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 name MaXX 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 may ways, it's made for you and your brain so that it can relax, focus on let the creative juice flowing with far fever distractions. We see desktop notifications in a very different way, but this is for another discussion. In short, the MaXX Desktop 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, using industry proven best practices and guide lines 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 but yet flexible. Every good and useful piece of tech deserves to be future-proof... This is where several decades of experience in building battle-proven mission critical systems and 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: 2D/3D 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. MaXX Desktop is also for anyone who wants get a break from all the surrounding noises and to create stuff while sporting a very unique/cool daily driver! Then, MaXX is for you too!

Navigation

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The MaXX Desktop team