OMG it's Beryl!
Not too long ago I upgraded the graphics in my current workstation. Only one post later I switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu and back then, someone suggested I should take a look at Beryl. Now, almost four months later, I was up to it, and boy, couldn’t have someone prepared me for this? *^_^*
I followed these nice and easy to follow instructions:
Install Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy with AIGLX
and then the madness could start. On a first view you really need to take a good look what has changed, it’s still Gnome as a desktop. But as soon as you move windows around, you notice the wobbly windows! ^_^
After that, I accidentily hit the scroll button somewhere on the desktop, after which my jaw fell on the desk… I quickly learned that holding/pushing the scroll button (which doubles as a third mousebutton) gets you ‘the cube’...
I run multiple monitors, after fiddling around a little I think I like two cubes (one on each monitor) best, but maybe I change back to one later on. Don’t know yet.
‘The cube’ on two separate monitors (this is taken from one screenshot):
original screenshot can be found here (it’s large!)
And still my desktop on the same monitors, only now with one big cube…
original screenshot can be found here (it’s large!)
Before I continue weeeeeing about this, what can I say?
Beryl… it’s euhm… it’s nice… *^_^*
By the way, this comes at a good time for me. Lately, since I have my little powerbook 12”, I found myself more and more using that instead of my workstation. That’s no problem of course, only I keep finding myself spending too much time on that on my couch, instead of firing up my workstation. Because of this rather uncomfortable way of ‘working’ on my couch, my rightshoulder really starts to ache quite bad. I guess that’s RSI-related and such and I have that problem way less when working properly behind my desk… With this, I’m sure you can find me back at my desk again.
And of course, Beryl has to sink in a little overhere, but boy, am I impressed!
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Beryl rocks indeed!
What GFX-card are you using BTW? I s’pose nVidia…
Getting it to work on my ATi 9600 was kind of a PITA but the final result was worth the sh*tload!
>What GFX-card are you using BTW? I s’pose nVidia…
Yes indeed, I’ve got a XFX 6800GS 256MB in there…
Beryl is really nice. I think it has a much more active development when compared with compiz but I believe that compiz will be included in Feisty as a default option.
I’ve got a few tutorials for setting up Beryl. I’ve found sometimes you need a few different tips on different machines. Might be worth checking out for anyone having trouble:
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/02/06/install-beryl-on-ubuntu-feisty-with-aiglx-for-nvidia-ubuntu-704/
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2006/10/29/beryl-with-latest-nvidia-drivers-aiglx-no-xgl-ubuntu-610/
Is it actually good for anything other than “looking cool”?
I’ve never seen any indication, anywhere, that it is.
(Yes, I know, it’s horrible of me to even <I>ask</i> about mere utility…)
>Is it actually good for anything other than “looking cool”?
Well, to be honest, I guess I could be more productive with this. I never used virtual desktops somehow, I simply didn’t like them. But call me anything you want, but visualized this way I actually started using the four desktops. So I’ve got one GIMP-desktop now, one with two browserwindows etc… Never did that before and it’s actually quite silly it took this kind of grunt to get me using multiple desktops while they have been around for as long as I know. Did I already mention that it looks cool? :-)
P.S. and there’s lots of little details which upgrade the desktop quite well. I’ve been using slightly transparent terminalwindows for a while, but the transparancy has never been this suave. Now it actually displays windows which are beneath it while before it only showed the desktop wallpaper even though there was some window in between the terminalwindow and the wallpaper (does this make sense?).
Now of course, it all runs pretty slick on my system. I guess when it would somehow be a little slow or such, I would definately fall back to my normal Gnome-desktop. It's 99% eyecandy of course.