I think I'm not alone when I say that abstract art and fractal images are very cool to look at. The cool factor jumps (at least) an order of magnitude when I find software that allows me to create my own fractal images.

I was browsing get-deb.net, a site that provides .deb packages of software to the Ubuntu-based Linux user community. Some of the packages have versions that are available through the repositories, but most often the repository version may not exist, may be an older version or may have dependencies that have to be resolved "by hand" rather than automatically or need to be compiled locally. Today I found Qosmic. Qosmic allows the user to produce rendered flame fractal images using the flam3 library by manipulating triangles; you don't need to know the math. There are tons of settings to play with, and it uses Qt4 to build the gui.

In addition to generating flame fractals, qosmic allows you to contribute "sheep" to the Electric Sheep community. From the Electric Sheep website:

So it becomes a collaborative, community-generated screensaver. There have been Electric Sheep displays in various museums, so this isn't a pooh-pooh thing.

I'm still figuring out the whole Electric Sheep thing, but until then Qosmic is pretty cool to play around with.

You have any links?

Fedora had qosmic in the repositories so I installed it but I don't have a clue as to how to use it.

Sorry about that, O,
The get-deb.net page for the app is at: http://www.getdeb.net/software/Qosmic
The GoogleCode page is at: http://code.google.com/p/qosmic/
As I mentioned there are some dependencies that will need to be satisfied and a slight change to the file qosmic.pro file in order to successfully build the application. From the readme:

*For my setup using Linuxmint 9, I had to modify qosmic.pro, line#52 as follows:
PKGCONFIG = flam3 lua5.1
the original line did not have the 5.1

Here's a screenshot of the Qosmic app running on my system:
At the bottom of the page is a link section, including the Electric Sheep project.

Since Fedora had it in the repositories, it also installed any dependencies that were needed.

No link tells me HOW to use the qosmic program. I guess I'm supposed to know how.

O,

The README file that is linked on the GoogleCode page above offers a little more info and tips for running the Qosmic program.

Thanks Bob. I missed that readme file entirely. Hope I can come up with something cool.

Part of me is in those electric sheep, lol. I've been a part of this program for 3 years now (on Windows). I have it set as my screensaver on the business desktop, and since it's connected to the server 24/7 my screens update each cycle with a different set. It's pretty cool, for those who love fractals.

I think I can integrate it into my xscreensavers, I just need to play around with it some... When it started up my cpu usage jumped to about 80% for several minutes, then seemed to drop to normal levels. I got the first sheep d/l and watched it cycle several times. Abstract screensavers just blow my socks off!

I enjoy these types of things and have the Really Slick Screensavers package integrated into my xscreensaver setup. Unfortunately, installing xscreensavers and RSS from the Ubuntu repositories didn't work as expected, and I had to do some file moving and configuration editing to make it all work - not to mention that Ubuntu rarely has updates in its repo for these packages. I could download xscreensaver packages from the web that were three versions ahead of what was in the repository. I hope I can get Electric sheep in my setup, too. When I installed ES from the repos, it didn't show up anywhere and wouldn't run from the terminal, so I went to their website and got their install script. Now ES runs, but I'd like to get it integrated into xscreensaver for my convenience.

I felt content just to leave mine with the Windows machine, and I have made no effort to try getting it set-up in Ubuntu.

On occasion, I'll upload my own creation, using Apophysis. I love working with fractals, it's so much fun. It's easy to get lost in the depths of them, searching for that perfect pattern.

Just in the past 20-some hours since I installed Electric Sheep, the software has d/l almost 100 sheep. I've got it partially running under xscreensavers.

I might download the software for my Windows installation (I dual boot) and replace Pixel City. They sure are addictive.

I see the Fedora Linux Electric Sheep script is available here.

Electric sheep runs on my system. The problem I have is that I use xscreensaver to manage all my screensavers, and while I can get it to come up in the selection menu (with the small preview), if I click on the preview button to get a full-screen preview, Electric Sheep throws an error:

detected another electricsheep process.
using read-only access, ie disabling downloading and rendering of sheep.

I haven't been able to figure that one out on my own, so I guess I'll post in the ES forums and see if someone has it solved or e-mail Jamie Z. (xscreensaver dev) and see if he knows of a fix.

Thanks for posting this, Bob63.

I have always been fascinated by Fractal Geometry. Isn't it interesting how fractals can be used to describe certain objects more accurately than other forms of mathematics. Not to mention, they are beautiful when mapped and colored in a computer model.

I've noticed that fashion designers are making some cool clothing using fractal patterns. I've seen some shirts I really like with fractal patterns on 'em.

Shirts with fractal patterns....Hmm. Some of them could look like 60's tie-dye, I think. Not that it would be a bad thing.

Not sure if you are familiar with the UFC and MMA, but their shirts have fractal designs, with tribal patterns. They look awesome.

@ mahvin, Not a regular viewer by any stretch, but I have seen clips, bits and pieces of them. I spent several years in Florida before moving back into the "ol homestead" - many of the younger guys down there seem to be sporting tribal tattoo work which can be interesting if done well.

@Gnutux, That's a pretty interesting link for Fractal Geometry. I took both Geometry and Algebra 1+2 in high school, then somehow ended up in a Finite Math class at a community college a few years later - that was more than twenty years ago - I might have to get out some of my old textbooks so I can follow it. The maths are pretty cool by themselves (in their own way ).

It's been 25 years for me, Bob63. I can't believe it's been that long since college. I haven't worked on much serious math since then.

I'm thinking that using return values from a formula involving fractals, as a seed into one or more parameters of a GIMP function, might produce some interesting results. I guess we already see this sort of thing in the current library of GIMP plug-ins and scripts available, to some extent.

I definitely want some cool psychedelic fractal shirts.

Are you a T-shirt person? How's this for a start?
It just so happened that Mozilla ran a T-shirt design contest for the launch of FF3, and their T-shirt template is still available online here. I snagged a copy, then made a fractal with Qosmic that was interesting and rendered it out at 800x600 high quality. Then a little Gimp cut-n-paste...

Here is a windows version of this if any are interested..
http://www.soft82.com/get/download/windows/apophysis/

homepage.. http://www.apophysis.org/

I find that Fraqtive (http://fraqtive.mimec.org/) works a lot better than xaOS (http://wmi.math.u-szeged.hu/xaos/doku.php) on Ubuntu, but xaOS has some cool edge detection filters. The clarity of fractals isn't comparable, though. Fraqtive definitely has better resolution and is far easier to code fractals from. xaOS has more fractal sets to choose from. Would be cool if you could combine the two.

Another note is that on Fraqtive, double clicking anywhere on a Mandelbrot will take you to a Julia set, whereas on xaOS, you have to press the M key to do the same.