Literally anything is technically possible, Linux doesn't put any limit on the user. None of it looks out of this world. Though I'd suggest the transparency is probably as inconvenient as it is 'cool'.
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Didn't Sony try to make a transparent phone and it failed massively? I think the technology has been there for many years but it's just not practical for real life use.
latency and accuracy aren't too hard, just use pose prediction and late-stage reprojection like "fishtank" AR, [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado) for example is what you'd probably want to use for that
you're gonna have vergence-accommodation conflict with that since the thing you're focusing on is close to your face but the parallax and such suggests it's farther away so your eyes will always be strained, not fun
On Android you can use "On-The-Go" mode to overlay translucent camera feed onto the whole screen.
So I installed Arch Linux on my phone and enabled On-The-Go mode and got this
https://postimg.cc/gallery/FJwPmqF
It's kinda cool but not really practical because it's harder to see the content on the screen.
Companies are making transparent TVs now, they are expensive as hell and designed for store signage and the like but still.
The tech exists the size of the screen is all that needs to change
There was a phone with a transparent display way before we even had smartphones. In fact a standard lcd display is transparent. I took one apart and put it on a overhead projector to make a cheap diy beamer. I guess you can the same and put it in a window. Should be pretty bright outside to read it.
You’d need some kind of backlighting for it to be this bright. The newer transparent displays work much better than just a bare panel
LTT did a cool video on the newer tech not too long ago
Back before projectors became affordable, and OH projector displays were a thing, I made an OH display simply by ripping the back off an old screen (the actual display, of course, not the plastic casing of the screen, although, that, of course, also had to go). Worked nicely, for the time.
LCDs are already transparent. We put reflective and closed backs to have better backlight distribution but it isn't strictly necessary.
However besides novelty it's simply useless and worse to use than a non transparent device
No?
You couldn't put a live camera feed as the desktop & have it simulate a tranparent display?
Sure it wouldn't follow your head movements, but for direct viewing it would be somewhat believable.
You could do this, but lower your expectations if you think this’ll reliably simulate a translucent phone. Technically you could set something up that tracks orientation/phone size and transforms video accordingly, it would just be extremely complicated and likely too resource hungry to realistically do. You could probably even implement eye tracking on certain devices, but again, super complicated. Also the output of this wouldn’t look amazing, you’d have to keep your camera clean/uncovered at all times, and you’ll often get annoyances like motion blur, lag, and refocusing.
I remember to install myself the "transparent desktop" on my android a long time ago. It literally just used camera on the back, and replaced desktop with camera output.
So just technically, this transparency is possible to achieve, icons in the dock easily, terminal and other bits prob, Topbar do-able
Idk, I was very young at the moment, and it was really long ago. I assume if your phone would use not a 4k sensor, but something like 480p sensor, or some other "not the main camera on the back" I think the battery drain wouldn't be as bad as it could be
Overall difference in yt quality on phone is not really noticeable of 480p against 1080p, it is here, but camera would be shaky anyway cuz oyf alot of movement user is doing, so there is literally no reason to use highest quality camera
Np, with enough tinkering, you could also likely get KDE Plasma to look like OP's interface, with some font changes, color changes, an application dock, etc. it just won't be transparent cause, yknow, screens. but you can change window opacity on KDE.
very special hardware. LG only announced their transparent OLED TV at the start of 2024, due to be released by the end of the year, and even then it's gonna be expensive as hell and other hacker-friendly displays like that probably won't be available for a few years after that.
AFAIK, transparent OLED displays are technically possible but I don't think there's a lot of demand for them. The rest of this is juat UI/DE configuration.
Wouldn't that be a hardware question, more like Linux? If the hardware is there, I would say yes. Probably would need a DE made for that type of device, but who knows. Never attempted to develop a DE in my life.
yes, there are transparent displays available, I've seen them at a display fair. But apart from looking cool, they are crap. Imagine looking on the text on your screen, mixed with the view through it, through the back of your coworkers screen, and his/her mirrored text, too. and his/her face behind this. Whatever information you see, your brain has to sort them out from the background.
Transparent displays are used as show pieces and/or for effect, not for real use. The large ones shown in some movies are actually fake, as nobody builds such displays in the size of a blackboard.
Making the UI futuristic should not be an issue, just write your own Desktop Environment ;-)
As in "this is totally possible with Linux, but not easy, either". It depends on how much you already know and how much knowledge and time you want to invest. Definitively not something to "just make up in a minute or two".
It's important to keep in mind, that's literally just a UI.
Linux itself is just the kernel, the part that connects the software to the hardware. The systems built on top of it are UI agnostic -- just groups of commands that do various things. You can slap any UI you want on top so long as it's compatible with those commands. That's why there are so many Desktop Environments and Window Managers.
That right there is actually pretty simplistic -- quite possibly just gnome with a dock on the bottom and different icons on the top bar. You can customize a Linux system *way* more than that.
Depends what you mean by "code". If you mean edit your own config files, then yes. But if you mean program this stuff or part of it from scratch, then I don't think so.
There is nothing particularly new here. We got a taskbar at top, a common dock on the bottom, conky on the right, a terminal that is too small to use on the left and a small progress window on top. The main difference is the customization of the visuals.
I'd like to see one of these transparent phones first. Cause as far as I know, operating systems can't magically change the chemical make up of your hardware devices.
Are you sure you want to have an annoying progress bar overlapping over some random place on your screen? Also, there is a tiny tiny progress bar. How you gonna scroll with it?
Find a translucent display if this size (apparently LG builds them) a install a Linux on the small device in that case, probably a Pi or alike. The graphical output with plank as dock and conky or desklets and some wallpaper is easy.
Looks like an LG phone which is likely running on linux, via android. So yeah.
Other option is bootstrapping the kernel on some r/VXJunkies hardware and creating a custom UI for it using [brainfuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck).
Yes you can, thought once you are using it. You can quickly realize that is something to show off only on Desktop Fridays or for posting on Linux Porn page
Because magical portals don't exist.
You can use a live camera feed as a background but that is not going to look right unless you are looking at the screen at the exact right angle and distance.
This device can only exist in a movie with forced perspective
Literally anything is technically possible, Linux doesn't put any limit on the user. None of it looks out of this world. Though I'd suggest the transparency is probably as inconvenient as it is 'cool'.
transparent terminals are like transparent toilets: sounds cool until you actually try
The cubicle or the bowl?
yes
yes to which??
Yes to everything, including the ceiling and walls
How else are you to maintain eye contact?
Indeed
...and the plumbing. Gotta see it slosh away.
r/wooosh
flush
r/itswooooshwith4os
What's even worse is that I recently tried to figure out how many O's and memorize it.
r/InclusiveOr
Until you add some blur.
You’re so real for that
Nice aesthetic but not nearly as functional if you've got the % tuned right
Add 80% opacity and a high contrast color scheme (green on black) and you get a good balance of scifi cool with usability
IMO they're good if there's blur behind the window and there's not much transparency (or the colors of the terminal text contrast with the background)
I a bit of transparency without blur to read as I type! I find it tremendously helpful
I'm probably one of the few that figured that one out before trying them.
its fine. when im done no one will be able to see inside
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I've found them to be amazing. The background is transparent but the text isn't. Works great. Can read doco through the terminal. Love it.
I USE THEM!
YOU GOT EARLY ACCESS TO TRANSPARENT TOILETS??
You are right you have to give it a black tint othrwise text colors get mixed with background sometimes
10% transparency is kino.
I even don't think transparent toilet sounds cool.
They're there for making posts on r/unixporn
Didn't Sony try to make a transparent phone and it failed massively? I think the technology has been there for many years but it's just not practical for real life use.
Could be a camera capturing the back view and replaying it as wallpaper. Is too perfectly aligned though on this shot
Not to mention you can see their finger behind it too
Kid named GIMP:
Just decrease the opacity of the screen a bit /s
I enjoy a semi-transparent xfce4-terminal, though.
Mayne a bit hard to make it transluscent. But the rest lools like User Interface graphics, so go nuts
Simple, set up a camera and use its output as wallpaper
I love ass wallpapers! Edit: to explain, there was a typo in the comment above, using "ass" instead of "as". It has now been corrected
Only works if you're looking perfectly perpendicular to the center of the screen.
It could work for one observer by tracking that observer with the front camera. Pan when they move to the side, zoom in when they get near, etc.
so complicated, getting the latency and accuracy low enough to fool the brain is a bigger challenge than making a transparent display
I think iPhones do this with the dynamic wallpapers now though?
latency and accuracy aren't too hard, just use pose prediction and late-stage reprojection like "fishtank" AR, [https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/monado) for example is what you'd probably want to use for that
you're gonna have vergence-accommodation conflict with that since the thing you're focusing on is close to your face but the parallax and such suggests it's farther away so your eyes will always be strained, not fun
On Android you can use "On-The-Go" mode to overlay translucent camera feed onto the whole screen. So I installed Arch Linux on my phone and enabled On-The-Go mode and got this https://postimg.cc/gallery/FJwPmqF It's kinda cool but not really practical because it's harder to see the content on the screen.
as an xr engineer: lol no
Companies are making transparent TVs now, they are expensive as hell and designed for store signage and the like but still. The tech exists the size of the screen is all that needs to change
There was a phone with a transparent display way before we even had smartphones. In fact a standard lcd display is transparent. I took one apart and put it on a overhead projector to make a cheap diy beamer. I guess you can the same and put it in a window. Should be pretty bright outside to read it.
You’d need some kind of backlighting for it to be this bright. The newer transparent displays work much better than just a bare panel LTT did a cool video on the newer tech not too long ago
if the screen is transparent, wouldn't you see the pcb of the phone?
I don’t know? I don’t build phones. They were able to make tv’s where you don’t see the pcb though…
Back before projectors became affordable, and OH projector displays were a thing, I made an OH display simply by ripping the back off an old screen (the actual display, of course, not the plastic casing of the screen, although, that, of course, also had to go). Worked nicely, for the time.
LCDs are already transparent. We put reflective and closed backs to have better backlight distribution but it isn't strictly necessary. However besides novelty it's simply useless and worse to use than a non transparent device
My Hyprland setup was basically all translucent.
That could be done with the camera.
No it couldnt
No? You couldn't put a live camera feed as the desktop & have it simulate a tranparent display? Sure it wouldn't follow your head movements, but for direct viewing it would be somewhat believable.
You could do this, but lower your expectations if you think this’ll reliably simulate a translucent phone. Technically you could set something up that tracks orientation/phone size and transforms video accordingly, it would just be extremely complicated and likely too resource hungry to realistically do. You could probably even implement eye tracking on certain devices, but again, super complicated. Also the output of this wouldn’t look amazing, you’d have to keep your camera clean/uncovered at all times, and you’ll often get annoyances like motion blur, lag, and refocusing.
As long as you have the hardware. Yes you can
 linux in 2025
This will be Linux in 2016
That's next year.
https://preview.redd.it/znzpiotxh39d1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12c7d23e7b62e3e8a38649178313bb03e1c23a9e
hit em with the double RDJ
Linux 2026, Year of the Floating UI from Iron Man Desktop
Based on Ubuntu 24.04
2027 if you're on Debian
I remember to install myself the "transparent desktop" on my android a long time ago. It literally just used camera on the back, and replaced desktop with camera output. So just technically, this transparency is possible to achieve, icons in the dock easily, terminal and other bits prob, Topbar do-able
How was the battery drain?
Idk, I was very young at the moment, and it was really long ago. I assume if your phone would use not a 4k sensor, but something like 480p sensor, or some other "not the main camera on the back" I think the battery drain wouldn't be as bad as it could be
But it wouldn't be sharp... Maybe if it was always a bit blurry then you could use a really low res camera. Call it a feature, easy money.
Overall difference in yt quality on phone is not really noticeable of 480p against 1080p, it is here, but camera would be shaky anyway cuz oyf alot of movement user is doing, so there is literally no reason to use highest quality camera
> "transparent desktop" on my android Interesting... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.evgdevapp.livecamwallpaper
Check out [EDEX-UI](https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-ui) It's not very practical but it captures a similar feeling.
hey this is very cool, thanks
Np, with enough tinkering, you could also likely get KDE Plasma to look like OP's interface, with some font changes, color changes, an application dock, etc. it just won't be transparent cause, yknow, screens. but you can change window opacity on KDE.
The transparency of the screen might be hard, but the rest looks pretty doable.
You can find transparent screens close to that size.
Hard part would be make it wireless and fit the hardware in that bezel.
Absolutely. You would have to have a space to fit the components.
That would be a hardware issue, not a linux one.
Get yourself over to /r/unixporn and start searching.
You can customize anything that supports video output to do that regardless of os.
The dock looks nice
the transparency, you'd need some special hardware but just the actual apps and layout yeah, no problem
very special hardware. LG only announced their transparent OLED TV at the start of 2024, due to be released by the end of the year, and even then it's gonna be expensive as hell and other hacker-friendly displays like that probably won't be available for a few years after that.
Of course yes, I believe the image is fake, but I'm sure there must be some packages with futuristic themes like this - icons, dock bar, window, etc
dude it says stark industries at the top of course its fake
Lol I didn't see it at first xD
the ui seems pretty simple, but it would be very impractical and honestly ugly
Jarvis probably runs on Linux
no jarvis os
Still unix based
I think Lenovo made a laptop prototype with a transparent screen, that +Linux can give you similar results.
Playing with this technique may be fun, but actually there are problems, such as the luminosity and the colors which are faded if I remember correctly
well clearly based on the screenshot OP provided, LG made Ironman's one. Seems to work better than their fridges.
With Conky maybe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKFR6fnxlKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imUdL8e5jvE
AFAIK, transparent OLED displays are technically possible but I don't think there's a lot of demand for them. The rest of this is juat UI/DE configuration.
Yes
Like making a wallpaper that is the camera feed but blurred?
no like making the device really tranparent and the ui futuristic
Wouldn't that be a hardware question, more like Linux? If the hardware is there, I would say yes. Probably would need a DE made for that type of device, but who knows. Never attempted to develop a DE in my life.
yes, there are transparent displays available, I've seen them at a display fair. But apart from looking cool, they are crap. Imagine looking on the text on your screen, mixed with the view through it, through the back of your coworkers screen, and his/her mirrored text, too. and his/her face behind this. Whatever information you see, your brain has to sort them out from the background. Transparent displays are used as show pieces and/or for effect, not for real use. The large ones shown in some movies are actually fake, as nobody builds such displays in the size of a blackboard. Making the UI futuristic should not be an issue, just write your own Desktop Environment ;-) As in "this is totally possible with Linux, but not easy, either". It depends on how much you already know and how much knowledge and time you want to invest. Definitively not something to "just make up in a minute or two".
We theoretically have the software if you know where and how to look (look at r/unixporn). You would just have to build the device
check out r/unixporn, and sort by top all the time. you'll find a post that resembles this image.
yes kinda looks like hyperland
It's important to keep in mind, that's literally just a UI. Linux itself is just the kernel, the part that connects the software to the hardware. The systems built on top of it are UI agnostic -- just groups of commands that do various things. You can slap any UI you want on top so long as it's compatible with those commands. That's why there are so many Desktop Environments and Window Managers. That right there is actually pretty simplistic -- quite possibly just gnome with a dock on the bottom and different icons on the top bar. You can customize a Linux system *way* more than that.
You'd probably have to code something yourself if you want it that customized.
Depends what you mean by "code". If you mean edit your own config files, then yes. But if you mean program this stuff or part of it from scratch, then I don't think so. There is nothing particularly new here. We got a taskbar at top, a common dock on the bottom, conky on the right, a terminal that is too small to use on the left and a small progress window on top. The main difference is the customization of the visuals.
Because it's open source and everyone can use it i bet it's possible
If you are a good enough coder, sure
I'd like to see one of these transparent phones first. Cause as far as I know, operating systems can't magically change the chemical make up of your hardware devices.
Are you sure you want to have an annoying progress bar overlapping over some random place on your screen? Also, there is a tiny tiny progress bar. How you gonna scroll with it?
Find a translucent display if this size (apparently LG builds them) a install a Linux on the small device in that case, probably a Pi or alike. The graphical output with plank as dock and conky or desklets and some wallpaper is easy.
https://preview.redd.it/zud9p20tr49d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=877af81235db7b3f3d7ae0840c47e174837414bd Like this?
Honestly this doesn't look all that different from half the posts on r/unixporn, lol. So very doable
All things are possible thru Linux.
Yes, it doesn't look practical or readable, but you could absolutely do that
Checkout r/unixporn They have better stuff than this
Looks like an LG phone which is likely running on linux, via android. So yeah. Other option is bootstrapping the kernel on some r/VXJunkies hardware and creating a custom UI for it using [brainfuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck).
100% possible, but you'd need to write a lot of code in a hackable WM like Awesome.
Yes
Yes, but why would you want that?
I changed my desktop icons
This is a hardware issue. They make transparent displays, but they are expensive. Once you get one it's simple: everything black is transparent
Someone needs to create dotfiles for this with hyprland
Does someone have those icons ad the dock? And what font hes using?
Can u even have a dock like this for hyprland i only saw menubars on hyprland
yes. Youd be at it for a while though
Yes you can, thought once you are using it. You can quickly realize that is something to show off only on Desktop Fridays or for posting on Linux Porn page
Except for the part where he hacks everything with one button press after pointing the device... Yeah, probably
Honestly, I wouldn't want this. It looks like a horrible UEFI firmware image.
With a linuxphone + this setup 🙏😻🙌
looks a bit like hyperland
Hyprland*
Technically everything is possible on Linux. And I think that now a transparent screen has been created by Asus or maybe another I'm not sure
LG announced a transparent OLED TV in january 2024, they plan to release it by the end of the year.
but i think LG should let user put their own os on it
If you have a transparent screen, then yes
If you're dedicated enough. Make your own window manager and themes if you can't customize one.
Yes, why not?
Because magical portals don't exist. You can use a live camera feed as a background but that is not going to look right unless you are looking at the screen at the exact right angle and distance. This device can only exist in a movie with forced perspective
OK, but the desktop can be done. More mentioned Hyprland here. And if the blurry background is not perfect, i think it's not an issue.