Older Laptop

[quietas]

I've got an older IBM thinkpad T22 with Ubuntu 6.06, 7.04, and now 7.10 dist-upgraded from 7.04. So far it all works great, the one thing I would like is to make it more attractive.

Specs: 900mhz P3, 384mb RAM, 8bm S3 Savage IX video card, DVD-ROM, 20GB HD

Question: Beryl/Compiz/AVN are out of the question, what else can be done to improve the utilitarian Ubuntu desktop?

~ Quietas

[pondochris]

What kinds of things are you looking for? What are the specs on your graphics card?
I ran beryl for months on a 600mhz box with a 32mB nvidia card. Everything worked fine except some graphic intensive games. You may want to give desklets a try.

If compiz works you should be able to use awn and emerald. I like emerald because you have many ways to customize your themes.

Currently I run compiz with awn and emerald. I made a desktop icon that kills compiz and reverts back to metacity, and one that restarts compiz. If I'm going to play a 3-d game I just click and kill compiz and restart it when I'm done.

Hope this helps.

[quietas]

After a bit more digging it seems that the S3 Savage IX cards are useless for Compiz/Beryl. Something with the drivers will not allow the 3d effects needed.

Anything non Compiz that folks can thinkg of that is low on the CPU usage that might snazzy up a plain Ubuntu install. This laptop is essentially for fun so we can go wild and try things that might not be good on a daily workstation.

~ Culley

[quietas]

A bit more digging, installing, and reading have convinced me that while the S3 chipsets are totally capable of 3D graphics in Windows, Linux still has no drivers. XGL and AIXGL will not work, thus neither will Compiz/Beryl. Since I can't get a compositing manager there will be no luck getting AWN working either.

What can be done to make it look less like everything else out there?

Honestly I can make XP look like Gnome or Gnome look like XP, but why? Gnome and KDE are fairly generic looking these days, there really isn't anything different than Windows in the looks, except I can do 3D and transparent in Windows.

How can I make things look better/cleaner/different and stay functional without a compositing manager?