Beryl - fork of Compiz

[DaiShan]

http://forum.beryl-project.org/

Lots of good information there, including a wiki with a noob friendly installation guide. I'm using it in conjunction with KDE on Ubuntu (Kubuntu) and it's got a lot of really great features. Just make sure that you are at least running dapper drake (update /etc/apt/sources.list by replacing all instances of breezy with dapper then run apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade) The one problem that I ran into was my xorg.conf no longer functioned so I had to run through dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to get things set back up again.Also, if you are using KDE and add the commands to ~/.kde/Autostart/ make sure to chmod +x <script>. They don't explicitly spell it out in the install guide, so just remember to do it on your own.

 

[Brazen]

What's so great about it, for all us ADD kids?

 

[imported_LoKe]

I've been using it before it was released in Alpha stage. Pretty nice, not sure what to say about it, though, because it depends on which version of Compiz you used before. Beryl + Edgy Eft is amazing, because AIGLX is built into xorg7.1, so much faster.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Brazen
What's so great about it, for all us ADD kids?

It's the version of Compiz previously known as compiz-quinnstorm. Most visibly, it's a lot of extra eye-candy plugins. But it also has a totally different theming system than vanilla (Novell) Compiz. David, the main Novell Compiz guy, has said (in so many words) that it's the work of a bunch of amateur hacks. He may be right, but it works OK for me and definitely gives a lot of nice options to play around with.

 

[xtknight]

They went over the top with this one (quantity over quality). It's more sluggish and clunky than the Compiz I knew and loved. I always seemed to have problems with the Quinnstorm ones. It kills my gnome-settings-daemon and de-skins my gnome so I had to remove it. Oh well... It's great NVIDIA has built-in compositing now though. Honestly I just want an accelerated X with minimal effects.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Originally posted by: xtknight
They went over the top with this one (quantity over quality). It's more sluggish and clunky than the Compiz I knew and loved. I always seemed to have problems with the Quinnstorm ones. It kills my gnome-settings-daemon and de-skins my gnome so I had to remove it. Oh well... It's great NVIDIA has built-in compositing now though. Honestly I just want an accelerated X with minimal effects.

The idea behind quinnstorms compiz is to have CGWD control some of the theming. But, now with Beryl, we have Emerald Themer. These both work in conjunction with GTK themes.

 

[xtknight]

Unfortunately I basically had no skin at all. There were window decorations, but all my buttons were the fallback flat default GNOME type. I had no GTK theme, and since gnome-settings-daemon was crashing I couldn't access any of my GNOME preferences.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Unfortunately I basically had no skin at all. There were window decorations, but all my buttons were the fallback flat default GNOME type. I had no GTK theme, and since gnome-settings-daemon was crashing I couldn't access any of my GNOME preferences.

When was the last time you tried Compiz?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: LoKe

Originally posted by: xtknight
Unfortunately I basically had no skin at all. There were window decorations, but all my buttons were the fallback flat default GNOME type. I had no GTK theme, and since gnome-settings-daemon was crashing I couldn't access any of my GNOME preferences.

When was the last time you tried Compiz?

I'm not sure, but my buttons never used to be flat and ugly with Compiz.

 

[drag]

I'm using Compiz + AIGLX right now. (Debian unstable now supports both, woot)

The eye candy maybe makes X use a bit more RAM, but it has no impact on cpu usage or even the speed of games I play on it. Pretty neat, not perfect, but neat.

For instance I use Totem with Gstreamer backend for media playback. I have to choose the 'noxv' option in the gstreamer-properties dialog (multimedia systems selector through the menus). XV works fine for mplayer, but for gstreamer it leaves a blank screen. This makes it run in 'x11' mode.. which also enables transparencies and wobbly windows and stuff like that to run well, but it uses extra cpu.

I like the ability to zoom in on things easily. I like having windows displayed with their content when I do alt-tab or the 'expose' stuff.

So it's nice and doesn't cost me much in the way of computer resources.

As for the purpose of 'eye candy'.. How many people here have a plain gray desktop?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: drag

For instance I use Totem with Gstreamer backend for media playback.

Kinda off the topic, but if you use Totem with Gstreamer, do you have problems playing DVDs? Or do you use something else for playing DVDs?

 

[drag]

Ya. Right now for Debian Unstable there is no gstreamer 0.10 plugin for dvd playback.
(there is a gstreamer 0.08 version plugin, but 0.08 sucks donkeys)

Use Xine for that. For things like enabling ac3/dts passthru and dvd menus it's still the best I figure.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Originally posted by: drag
Ya. Right now for Debian Unstable there is no gstreamer 0.10 plugin for dvd playback.
(there is a gstreamer 0.08 version plugin, but 0.08 sucks donkeys)

Use Xine for that. For things like enabling ac3/dts passthru and dvd menus it's still the best I figure.

I assume the Debian Unstable is running xorg 7.1, which os allowing you to use AIGLX on what I would assume is an nVidia card?

 

[batmang]

running edgy with beryl 0.1.1, anyone know why my cpu hits 99% usage when resizing a window manually? ex: dragging from corner to resize. it sticks the cpu at 99% for a second while it does it. (according to my system monitor and sluggish display)

 

[Looney]

I love it. I find with the cube, i use multiple desktops much mor often, since it's just so easy to cycle between desktops and now exactly what's on them. And on the fly transparency is pretty useful as well.

 

[IEC]

I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 with XGL + Beryl. Latest everything and no problems here. Sometimes I *do* have to exit the beryl theme manager for things to display properly though. *Shrug* it's beta, so whatever. I used a startup script so I can switch between Gnome and XGL at will with a simple logout.

 

[Robor]

I'm confused... I've got Edgy running with an ATI 9800 Pro. I followed one of the HowTo's and got no errors but I don't notice anything different than standard Gnome. I've got the 'gem' icon with beryl manager and emerald theme manager but making changes does nothing. If I click the gem icon and choose beryl or metacity the desktop flickers but nothing changes.

 

[Robor]

After reading some info from several more HowTo's I managed to get everything borked. Now all I can boot to is Failsafe Terminal. Regular and Failsafe Gnome both boot to a blank desktop (missing icons) with my gnome panel at the bottom but empty. The thing is, the only thing I modified was my xorg.conf that I backed up before experimenting with it. Copying the original (and working) xorg.conf back didn't fix it. :-/

 

[Robor]

Got it working. Reinstalled the ATI driver, reconfigured xorg.conf and did an apt-get dist-upgrade. All is good now.

Must say, *very* impressive.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: Robor
Got it working. Reinstalled the ATI driver, reconfigured xorg.conf and did an apt-get dist-upgrade. All is good now.

Must say, *very* impressive.

Glad to hear it worked out, I went the startup script route to avoid what happened to you - I've borked about 3 linux installations trying to get 3d acceleration working - can anyone say linux noob?

 

[batmang]

Hrmm, you guys can see my system specs in my sig. My video card is not listed, but it is a NVidia FX5500 256MB AGP. Monitor is a 17" LCD at 1280x1024, @ 75hz. For some reason, when I boot up, I get 180-220fps within beryl. (i used the beryl benchmark tool.), after being used for a while, my fps drop between 40-80. Anyone have any tips as to why? Also, when i resize windows my CPU usage will hit 99% and then go back to normal after I'm done resizing. Anyone know why? I would think my system could handle beryl quite well... and also handle resizing windows.

 

[drag]

Resizing windows is currently a problem with XGL stuff.

You get these effects by a technique called 'composition'. That is instead of rendering all the windows all at once on your desktop, as is the normal fasion, you render all the windows in a off-screen buffer then take the image from them then turn it into textures which are mapped (in compiz or beryll) to 3d primitives.

Since all the speed you get is from manipulating those primitives the drawing of the actual window is still done in the old fasioned method. When you resize the windows it can't do it all slick with 3d acceleration so it's going to use probably software rendering.

I expect that as they get glitz working to replace Xrender then those windows will be able to get acceleration for resizing and graphics via indirect rendering. Especially once you get vector based graphics.

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: drag
Resizing windows is currently a problem with XGL stuff.

You get these effects by a technique called 'composition'. That is instead of rendering all the windows all at once on your desktop, as is the normal fasion, you render all the windows in a off-screen buffer then take the image from them then turn it into textures which are mapped (in compiz or beryll) to 3d primitives.

Since all the speed you get is from manipulating those primitives the drawing of the actual window is still done in the old fasioned method. When you resize the windows it can't do it all slick with 3d acceleration so it's going to use probably software rendering.

I expect that as they get glitz working to replace Xrender then those windows will be able to get acceleration for resizing and graphics via indirect rendering. Especially once you get vector based graphics.

that makes complete sense. thanks for the response, i REALLY appreciate that!