Do You Beryl/Compiz

[Onyros]

Just to get a handle on how many people are using Compiz/Beryl, or a regular 2D desktop ;)

BTW, I'm on a 2D desktop. It's not that I don't like Beryl or Compiz, for that matter... I just prefer usability before eye-candy.

[KhaaL]

I'm still on a 2D desktop because mainly I didn't manage to install beryl (ended with a broken X-server).

But I will try it, once edgy is stable and is installed on one of my local HDs :twisted:

[John.Michael.Kane]

No I don't beryl/aiglx/xgl/compiz. I have tried it in the past though.

[ahaslam]

I Googled 'Beryl' yesterday, I didn't even know what it was ;)

Tony.

[PatrickMay16]

I just use a normal GNOME desktop.

[skymt]

I tried it, just before the Beryl fork. It was promising, but buggy. I'm on a plain old 2D desktop right now, but I'll probably try again once Beryl reaches 0.5 or so.

[theturtlemoves]

I started using compiz/AIGLX yesterday and today I switched to Beryl. It works really well, and I disable it when I want performance (it's a two-click process).

I like it :D

[ixus_123]

I'm just on a normal 2d.

Perhaps when there is some sort of cool 3D file browser I might make the switch - I think someone was working on a project like that a year ago or so & had a demo video on their site? (amyone?))

[Charles Hand]

It's an evalgelism thing for me. I use a wallpaper that says "Ubuntu" or "Linux" on it, and I use Beryl. The folks at the coffeeshop are all agog.

[PriceChild]

Loving Beryl :)

[Kindred]

Loving Beryl :)

Don't you find it jerks somewhat at that fps when you rotate the cube and move big windows and such?

I'd use Beryl but I get a minimum of 60fps and it gets a bit clunky at some things, when I get a new card i'll likely use it full time.

[zenwhen]

Regular metacity here. The only thing I like about Beryl is the expose stuff, and even that is dodgy as it is less smooth on a Geforce 6800 than expose is on a Radeon 9000.

[Polygon]

2d desktop, i dont really have a need for a spinning cube and transparant windows

[PriceChild]

Don't you find it jerks somewhat at that fps when you rotate the cube and move big windows and such?

I'd use Beryl but I get a minimum of 60fps and it gets a bit clunky at some things, when I get a new card i'll likely use it full time.Nope... mine is perfectly smooth.

Stays well over 200 when i rotate on a geforce 4 fx 5600 xt

:D

[loell]

beryl, definitely

it just so happened, that i have an nvidia card, followed a howto ,
and viola it works :)

[Iandefor]

I switch off between them all. Even the abacus, occasionally ;).

I prefer compiz most of the time, however.

[darkhatter]

what browser are you guy or gals running on you're abacus?

[LMP900]

Beryl on integrated graphics! :cool:

I was originally a Mac user and I missed exposé too much. It's still somewhat buggy, but this has serious potential.


what browser are you guy or gals running on you're abacus?

:lol:

[d3v1ant_0n3]

Beryl on Edgy/Intel 845...Loving it. Smooth and pretty.

THIS (http://ubuntuforums.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=3789&cat=3) is my current prettiness, although I've changed the skydome since yesterday. I WILL make it look perfect! ](*,)

[IYY]

There is only one feature of Compiz that I want and that is smooth moving and minimizing of windows. However, this feature alone is not worth the problems (mainly twinview issues).

[ericesque]

simply metacity for me. Too many headaches just for the expose feature. Instead of adding more eye candy they should focus on making the useful features stable. Once they have a rock solid foundation, then start developing more plug-ins or effects.

[fuscia]

i tried to get compiz working when i saw a bunch of nice themes for it (i ended up having to reinstall). other than that, i don't get the fascination for these silly cubes.

[darkhatter]

my laptop's card finally works with the nvidia driver (nvidia geforce go 6100) so I'll be playing with it, plus I can use the beta driver so I'm really looking forward to this, PLUS kde 4, and gnome is going to have this jazz built in so I'm REALLY looking forward to it. I couldn't get beryl to work so I went to suse, then I found out what was wrong so I came back to ubuntu.

For Those who hate to read: beryl

[notarikon]

Beryl here - well, 80% of the time anyway, it gets turned off when I want to watch video or play NWN. Most of the effects are turned off, but translucency and the spinning cube are there :) Works on both my nVidia card and the Matrox G500 (surprisingly)

Come on NWN2 :P

[deepwave]

Tried compiz. Lot of fun, and beautiful eye-candy. Actually too much eye-candy... I sort of just sat there... measmorized by the desktop... so psychodelic...

And then I realized I had assignments to do. So it back to regular 2D. Maybe I will switch over permanently after a month or two with 6.10

A side note, I love to tease my friends still held hostage by the dark side about having a nicer OS then them.

Does anyone else with beryl/compiz tease their friends?
About having a Vista-ish desktop. Before Vista. And then poking some fun at the Mac OSX fans. Cause you can?

[paul cooke]

Just to get a handle on how many people are using Compiz/Beryl, or a regular 2D desktop ;)

BTW, I'm on a 2D desktop. It's not that I don't like Beryl or Compiz, for that matter... I just prefer usability before eye-candy.

I'm not going anywhere near it until it is mainstream...

currently the howto threads are just too confusing and there's no easy way to back out. It really annoys me when the key item of info is lurking some four or five pages in on the thread and hasn't been edited back into the first post in it. Especially after I've got a broken system because of it.

[chaosgeisterchen]

I wish I could use Beryl appropiate, but it did not yet work.

Waiting for Edgy and AIGLX now and the next tries.

[woedend]

i finally broke down and upgraded from compiz to beryl yesterday seeing as xorg 7.1 and nvidia 9xxx are out(goodbye xgl, i will miss you). It looks great but first impressions are that its...kinda pushy. Installs a splash screen, a tray icon...eh well...i like it.
But the settings manager needs major reorganization I think...i almost had a heart attack.

[denad]

I used XGL/Compiz a few weeks ago, was really cool :D. Since then I reinstalled dapper and heard that I should use Beryl and AIGLX instead. But after an hour or two following the howto, the only thing i ended up with was a broken metacity :confused: So now Im going to try out Vista RC2, while waiting for Edgy RC. Is it easier to get aiglx/beryl up and running in edgy?

[Onyros]

Tried compiz. Lot of fun, and beautiful eye-candy. Actually too much eye-candy... I sort of just sat there... measmorized by the desktop... so psychodelic...

And then I realized I had assignments to do. So it back to regular 2D. Maybe I will switch over permanently after a month or two with 6.10

A side note, I love to tease my friends still held hostage by the dark side about having a nicer OS then them.

Does anyone else with beryl/compiz tease their friends?
About having a Vista-ish desktop. Before Vista. And then poking some fun at the Mac OSX fans. Cause you can?I really identify with what you just described. I'm one of those people that actually work (a lot) on my laptop, and I found myself spinning the cube just for... spinning the cube's sake... It was purrrrty.

Then when I needed to get back to real life, I craved for the 2D safety and usability and, somewhere down the line after being back to regular Metacity, started seeing spinning cubes everywhere.

So, as it was poisoning my work routines, I uninstalled Compiz. For teasing purposes I keep a couple of Kororaa Live CD's on my laptop's bag all the time.

I also agree that a solid foundation should first be found, and then expanded on, rather than trying to pack a whole lot of features on an already somewhat unstable base.

There are features I really like, and it seems like Exposê is quite a popular one. Being a traumatized OS X user, it's one of the few features I miss from using a MAC. (I don't like how Mac does manage to conceal its core - folders, libs and whatnot - even better than Windows does. Mac does it by concealing properly, Windows does it by being utterly disorganized).

I remember trying a couple of things similar to Exposé, one was a native GNOME app and the other was a KDE app. KDE's was much more fluid, but too buggy on GNOME (same goes for Yakuake, which I'd love to get working properly on GNOME), and the other was just slow. If anyone has Yakuake or one of those Exposé-like thingies working with GNOME properly, please do share the knowledge! :D

[catanzag]

I typically use compiz, though I have to disable some cpu consuming effect like wobbly; 3D experience, transparency and cube are very amazing!!!

[bastiegast]

Theres something that confuses me. Why is it Compiz OR beryl, isnt it like this: beryl=compiz (same code) with additional stuff which makes beryl an newer version of compiz with another name.

Go to http://www.compiz.org/ and find that the community has moved to beryl, why even call it a fork? while its just another version with new names,can someone explain this?

By the way, I use beryl now, love its, its just way smoother than metacity. And the 3d effects are just plain cool.

[matrooswolf]

Beryl all the way, love the animated skydome cube, transparency (when typing commands in the terminal ...), the exposé effect, etc ...

I don't know if it helps my productivity, but I don't think it hurts it either (this forum on the contrary ... ;)

(Still on Xgl on dapper, with an OSX theme)

[d3v1ant_0n3]

Basically...Beryl is what used to be compiz-quinnstorm, one 'variety' of compiz. Due to a difference of opinions on various things, the quinnstorm branch of Compiz forked into Beryl. Which, judging from the amazing work coming out of the Beryl team, has to be a good thing.

More info here (http://forum.beryl-project.org/topic-4591-beryl-informations-announcement)

*edit* I was replying to bastiegast's post, I forgot to quote....

[Anonii]

I tried to install Compiz twice. I failed both.
I stopped trying after that, because I realised that the features it provides are not that incredible to be worth the time I'd be spending to configure it.

[ubuntu_demon]

I voted "Beryl". I installed it and it works without problems on my new laptop with intel GMA 950. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to make it my default wm.

[fuscia]

i just tried beryl, for the first time, using the sabayon live disc. fun to play with, but it gets old fast.

[Old Pink]

I tried Beryl and Compiz, but my video card isn't installed properly in Ubuntu, and nobody replied to the request for help thread I made.

So no, I'm a 2D Destkop user.

[Quake]

Did anyone try Beryl in a system like mine?

Amd Athlon XP 1800+
Geforce MX 440 64 MB
1 GB Ram.

If yes, is it fast? Do you have problems viewing videos?

[ayoli]

voted beryl, usability and eye-candy: beryl just rocks :D

[Wloxen]

I've just bought a new video card to use it!!!! :-)

But I'm still trying to configure it; it's installed, but something goes wrong...

[kvonb]

All I want is the desktop shadowing effect, but it seems that you have to read the Old Testament to get it running!

The main problem is that none of this stuff sits well with gaming, as far as I know you have to disable it all to play 3d games, which seems silly to me, might as well go back to dual booting!

I used 3dDesktop a year ago, it was nice but it chewed up far too much RAM just for a little show.

Hell I complain that Gnome panel uses WAY too much memory, never mind this spinning desktop stuff, I mean 12 megabytes for a trash icon??

I hand soldered 16 pin RAM chips into my Amiga 1000 to give it 1 megabyte, this is blasphemy!!!!

[darkhatter]

All I want is the desktop shadowing effect, but it seems that you have to read the Old Testament to get it running!

The main problem is that none of this stuff sits well with gaming, as far as I know you have to disable it all to play 3d games, which seems silly to me, might as well go back to dual booting!

I used 3dDesktop a year ago, it was nice but it chewed up far too much RAM just for a little show.

Hell I complain that Gnome panel uses WAY too much memory, never mind this spinning desktop stuff, I mean 12 megabytes for a trash icon??

I hand soldered 16 pin RAM chips into my Amiga 1000 to give it 1 megabyte, this is blasphemy!!!!

if its to slow buy a better computer, don't cry because you're 10 year old computer is too old.

if you right click the read icon thing, you'll be able to turn off any effects you don't want

[hanzomon4]

All I want is the desktop shadowing effect, but it seems that you have to read the Old Testament to get it running!

The main problem is that none of this stuff sits well with gaming, as far as I know you have to disable it all to play 3d games, which seems silly to me, might as well go back to dual booting!

I used 3dDesktop a year ago, it was nice but it chewed up far too much RAM just for a little show.

Hell I complain that Gnome panel uses WAY too much memory, never mind this spinning desktop stuff, I mean 12 megabytes for a trash icon??

I hand soldered 16 pin RAM chips into my Amiga 1000 to give it 1 megabyte, this is blasphemy!!!!

If you can use AIGLX(nvidia or intel cards?) it won't affect gaming. The problem comes in with XGL which doesn't allow direct rendering.

But, yeah it seems like alot at first.. hell it may be, but I've forgotten.

[raintheory]

I've got XGL/Beryl running on my laptop... great stuff!

On our older desktop PC I just have 2D tho...

[kvonb]

if its to slow buy a better computer, don't cry because you're 10 year old computer is too old.

There's no need to be rude and arrogant, I'm not crying and for your information I am running a P4 Prescott w/ 1 gig if RAM, hardly 10 years old!


if you right click the read icon thing, you'll be able to turn off any effects you don't want

What "read icon"?

This thread asked the question "Do You Beryl/Compiz?", I said that I don't and stated the reasons for that given my experiences with the Compiz stuff so far, I wasn't "crying" or complaining either for that matter, just making whymsical jibes about memory uses of today's apps.

It's called "humour".

Relax, Kev :)

[kpolice]

I'm using Beryl all the time.

For me is rock solid and I have no crashes.

[Krakatos]

Seems like compiz is really dying out at the hands of Beryl.
BTW, I'm using Beryl too :)

[Foudre]

what browser are you guy or gals running on you're abacus?

i'm running bead-fox, the firefox version desigend to run on the beads of an abacus

and i use beryl, just got it setup today, i love the transperancy, not so big fan of some of the other effects, but thats why you can turn them off

[BoyOfDestiny]

I'm still on dapper and installed beryl (and the beryl-manager applet is great since it lets me switch window managers so easily.)

Normally, not really an eyecandy fan... But I have to say it's great. I especially like the app switching (alt + tab or just going to the corner of the screen... The way it scales and shows all the apps on the desktop.)

I think zoom also offers a lot usuability potential too.

As for the other effects, I think the cube and wobbly windows are really, really cool. It's been a long time since moving an app window around had any sort of novelty for me...

Anyway, I've been switching between beryl and metacity for now, since I get some issues with games (prboom and dosbox appear somewhat transparent, zsnes blinks like the dickens.)

So in terms of usability, I say some of the effects are great. In terms of "oh wow!" definitely.

[Foudre]

actualy i'm beggin to fall in love with the cube, i mean its usefull, its like the idea of multiple workspaces with some usablity added to it

[maagimies]

I use Beryl, it (currently) works greatly even with my AMD Athlon XP 1900+ Geforce 3 without using too much memory :P
Although, I think the default options for Compiz/Beryl are a quite offputting, I can easily see it getting in the way of usability for some people, because it does.
I changed the creating and closing animations to Fade, and set the duration to both to 0,25 (instead of 0.70) seconds. Then I toned down the wobble, disabled "lighting" to gain performance, and so on.
I don't like to wait for animations to stop so I can work. ;)

[plb]

What kind of stuff does Beryl offer that compiz doesn't? I would try it but I'm not on Ubuntu at the moment...I'm waiting for edgy release to try it out.

[chaosgeisterchen]

Beryl can do everything Compiz can do. Plus a bunch of extra animations and features just like fire, zoom with typing, magic lamp and so on. Very fast development.

[djsroknrol]

When I reinstalled Dapper on my 'newness' rig (P4 3.0MHz), I made a special session for Beryl and XGL just to show off to friends, But there's nothing like the security of metacity for me. It is a nice touch to be able to switch between the two...

;)

[mushroom]

I like kompmgr, it's pretty much Compiz/Beryl minus cube/wobbly.

[chaosgeisterchen]

Can you please tell me what kompmgr is? The new KDE thing?

[darkhatter]

Can you please tell me what kompmgr is? The new KDE thing?

I googled it and it appears to be just that

[mithras86]

I'm using Beryl, but with less animations, wobbly windows and speed than the default values.

When you get used to certain plugins (e.g. scale, cube) Beryl increases your usability a lot. That's the main reason I use it. It's cool that you can blow your windows up with fireworks, but those are mainly cpu-asking features which don't increase functionality.
On the other hand, I still can't wait when a new widget plugin is released, especially when you can place them at the bottom/top of the cube =D>

[compmodder26]

Beryl/AIGLX on Intel 950 in my Thinkpad T60. Works flawlessly and is very smooth. I absolutely love it.

[bluenova]

Using Beryl with:

Athlon 1Ghz, 512 SDRam, Nvidia Geforce 2 64Mb

Smooth as a babies bottom, as long as I don't have too much running, i.e. more than 10 apps.

[pichalsi]

Beryl 4ever :P

Asus A6Vm notebook, kernel 2.6.19-rc3, beta nVidia drivers

Centrino 1.7GHz, 1024 MB RAM, GeForce 7300 GO

[MedivhX]

When I get edgy I will surely use Beryl. On Dapper currently using 2D desktop. :D

[mostwanted]

I used Compiz and later Beryl on Dapper using XGL and it was really responsive and fast.

Now, using the new NVIDIA beta drivers, it seems to lag a bit =/ hope it's something to do with the beta quality of the drivers and not the actual efficiency as compared to XGL.

[der_joachim]

Tried Beryl today since I will reinstall in the near future anyway (new HDs, and a lot of cruft over the years...). Nothing to lose. Worked almost immediately out of the box. There are still some weirdnesses, but I like it.

[Saibot]

Beryl is installed on 2 of my systems right now and it's been very fast and stable for me - absolutely loving it. I actually first installed Compiz last spring. Before that I really only played with Ubuntu a little bit, but once I found Compiz I almost abandoned Windows completely except for gaming. It just makes Windows seem so boring. My main system is triple booting Windows XP, Windows Vista RC2, and Ubuntu Dapper. I use Ubuntu most of the time. If I hadn't been spoiled by Beryl I probably would have been much more impressed with the Aero interface in Vista, but when I first installed it my reaction was - meh... I've seen it all before.

[.t.]

But we need Flip3D so we can definitely say that when Vista is out!

[sean mac]

been using beryl for a good month now :) still love how easy it is to move around in it!

[d3v1ant_0n3]

IMO, scale is much prettier and more usable than flip3d....

[chaosgeisterchen]

There were several discussions about Flip3D on beryl forums but the devs do not want to implement it because of personal dislike as far as I remember. It could also result in a lawsuit against Beryl which is not the way to go. Vista window decorations have already been cut out of Beryls official release for that reason.

[muishkin]

I beryl on my gentoo desktop using the latest nvidia beta driver and it's really awesome now that the most of bugs are ironed out. The cpu usage is minimum even with all effects turned on. It max out usually at around 10%. The ubuntu firewall machine (pentium 3) will stay beryl-free of course.

[gnomeuser]

I use compiz, the setup was literally one click since my system is supported via only free drivers. The only complaints I have is that you can't do accelerated XV video playback with any compositing manager enabled and when you have wobbly windows there's noticable flickering when text settles down.

The later should be fixable, the former I'm told is a lot of work so for now using the non-XV x11 output is the only option.

[omns]

.

[ComplexNumber]

i voted for 2D desktop. i just don't see the need to have all that wobbling, glimmering, shimmering, twisting, rotating, crashing eye candy. a nice metacity + gnome theme + wallpaper suit me just fine.

[jasmuz]

I managed to get my 3D acceleration for my ATI card yesterday, and quickly jumped to use Beryl, i cant complain about it, it looks sweet as heck!

Plus i use it to blow my ******* user friends away!

So, for the moment, im "testing" the Beryl and XGL...If not, i can always revert to 2D.

[joehill]

I installed Beryl and find it breathtakingly cool. I show it off to my Mac friends to convince them Linux is ahead of them, and I can sit and play with the effects forever. The animations are impressively smooth and cool on my Intel card.

But for now it's not really practical, so when I want to get work done I use Metacity. I can't watch videos with it, and what happens on the screen is always a split-second behind what I type or mouse (regardless of what program I'm using), which is terrible for writing papers. Web pages take forever to scroll and then keep scrolling when I let go of the button. Windows always take a second or two to open or close. It's great entertainment but forget getting anything done.

When it becomes as responsive and fast as Metacity (maybe I need new hardware for that) I'll switch permanently.

[nbound]

I installed Beryl and find it breathtakingly cool. I show it off to my Mac friends to convince them Linux is ahead of them, and I can sit and play with the effects forever. The animations are impressively smooth and cool on my Intel card.

But for now it's not really practical, so when I want to get work done I use Metacity. I can't watch videos with it, and what happens on the screen is always a split-second behind what I type or mouse (regardless of what program I'm using), which is terrible for writing papers. Web pages take forever to scroll and then keep scrolling when I let go of the button. Windows always take a second or two to open or close. It's great entertainment but forget getting anything done.

When it becomes as responsive and fast as Metacity (maybe I need new hardware for that) I'll switch permanently.
Damn... that sucks... on mine... its speedy as... (i cant tell any difference from metacity) i can also watch vids at the same time... (even move them round (thus warping them), and even going around the cube with them, with no problems at all...

I love Beryl :D

[chaosgeisterchen]

Now I Beryl too. It's very cool but slows down overall performance of working significantly. So I will think about stopping using it.

But so far there are no reasons to stop using it.

I will wait for the first 'stable' release of aquamarine, though.

[darkhatter]

Beryl doesn't slow my computer at all, but my laptop is pretty new so that may be the reason. The hardware on my laptop is giving me trouble so I'm going to stay out of Linux for awhile and maybe play with Suse while I wait for the next release of ubuntu

[Kateikyoushi]

I installed it for my sister on her desktop, looks cool, some animations are longer than their metacity equivalents but some new features might give productivity a small boost, personally I stick with ratpoison because it's the fastest and most effective.

[spinflick]

I installed Beryl and love it :mrgreen:

[josys36]

I use the standard 2D desktop. I really can't find a reason at all to have a spinning cube, and exploding windows. I have code to write and stuff to do. Running this shop aint easy ya know.

Jason

[aqwabawks]

I'm running Beryl as well... Some of the effects are really cool (such as the cube and the woobly windows), however there are some things that could use work (i.e. when your mouse is in the uppermost or lowermost corner it brings up the Linux version of expose, which gets annoying after a while) and the wave-like animation when selecting menus.

Other than that I really dig Beryl... :)

[dbott67]

Beryl on my laptop (ATI Radeon x1400) and 2D Gnome on my desktop.

[joehill]

I've played with the settings a bit more and have found it's plenty fast if I change "opacity" to 100% for both focused and unfocused windows in the "trailfocus" settings. Transparency is one of my favorite things, but it slows things down a lot on my low-capacity Intel card. The other thing that grinds my system to a complete halt is the "blur" feature. So I'm using low brightness and saturation on unfocused windows instead.

And I've got videos to work with VLC through playing with the video settings (not so well with Totem amd Mplayer), so at least it's usable now.

[nandasunu]

simply metacity for me. Too many headaches just for the expose feature. Instead of adding more eye candy they should focus on making the useful features stable. Once they have a rock solid foundation, then start developing more plug-ins or effects.

agreed. I've tried a million times to get beryl or compiz to work right on my machine with no luck so gave up (sort of ;))

[steveneddy]

The very good thing about beryl is the beryl manager will let you go from Metacity (or window manager of choice) to beryl at will, with the push of a button.

So you could log in as Metacity (2D) and when you want to show off to your friends or need some wobbly windows, switch over to beryl.....need to go to work> Go back to Metacity.

It's very stable and fun to use, too.

And it LOOKS SO SWEET!!!

[JayTee]

I love Beryl!!! It took a couple tries to get it working but hey, it's still Beta but it's a pretty decent Beta at 0.1.1 and I've had very few glitches.
If you also love Beryl and want to do something to thank Quinnstorm who has done the lion's share of coding on this then go to this link and it'll give you a way to send her a donation.
http://forum.beryl-project.org/viewtopic.php?pid=51781#p51781.
She's a crack programmer for a 24 year old in my book. She plans on using the donation money to buy a laptop so she can work on Beryl when she's not at home. She's looking at a $500. model. I sent her a donation and if most of the people here that love Beryl can send one, (even $5 bucks) then maybe she can get a top of the line model instead. God knows, she deserves it. How many people do you know would work as hard to produce something like this working for free?

[theicyj]

I cannot get Beryl/Compiz to work on my Radeon 9250. So I use the plain old 2d default. :(

[chaosgeisterchen]

I cannot get Beryl/Compiz to work on my Radeon 9250. So I use the plain old 2d default. :(

Do you use Edgy and the R300 drivers? They are obligate in order to get Beryl to run.

[theicyj]

Yeah, I am using Edgy. R300 drivers? Do you have a link to a good guide? I have used a few guides, but to no avail.

[Suzan]

I am using Beryl on Edgy with nvidia-beta-driver now for a week or so. And - I love it! :-)

The install was easy and it works nearly perfect. I have to play around with the beryl-settings for a while, now it works very well for me.

I love the cube and the switching between desktops/programs with crtl+alt+tab. That's so nice to work with.

[chaosgeisterchen]

Yeah, I am using Edgy. R300 drivers? Do you have a link to a good guide? I have used a few guides, but to no avail.

Guides? Just select ati as driver in the xorg.conf (should be done automatically...) and install Beryl from any repository following the guides floating around here.

You simply have to add the DRI-Extension and AIGLX-Section in the xorg.conf.

Was enough to get it to run here.

[MedivhX]

I currently have Beryl... Partially...

This is the problem!!! http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=295073

[Circus-Killer]

i voted beryl, but i did only install it today.

i had previously installed beryl a couple of months ago, but it was from the daily updated svn repo, which obviously had many fixes/new problems with every upgrade.

this time 'round i went for the more stable less-up-to-date repository, and everything seems to work fine. if nothing goes terribly wrong, i'll keep using it. *fingers crossed* ;)

[joehill]

I'm usually not much the cvs type, but I've migrated from Beryl 0.1.1 to the 0.1.3 cvs repositories, and there are lots of features and improvements (new animations, input during zoom, windows depicted in 3D when rotating the cube, etc.). Instructions on enabling the cvs repositories are here:
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/SVN_Snapshots_Repository
Yes, it does break every once in a while (maybe you should only upgrade every few days instead of every day), but whenever it does, I just use Metacity for a few hours until the next version comes out. The daily developments are really exciting.

[Bigbluecat]

Beryl.

Installed it just over a week ago. Turned off the wobbly menus - just a bit over the top and vomit inducing.

[Onyros]

As I started the thread and was only using a plain 2D desktop at the time, I should now say that I've partially sold my soul to the Dark Side of the Desktop.

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/890/darkside1mg9.th.jpg (http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=darkside1mg9.jpg)

The "Exposé" (Scale) effect is just too useful not to be used (and Skippy or Kompose are just not good enough).

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/9467/darkside2st8.th.jpg (http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=darkside2st8.jpg)

I still use Fluxbox the most, though. With Fluxbox I just use window tabs instead of the Scale Effect.

http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/6386/skintopfl5.th.jpg (http://img393.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skintopfl5.jpg)

Most of Beryl's effects are pretty useless. Pretty: yes! Useful? Not really.

[rigol]

I like some effects of Beryl - it installed without complaining, so here we go :)

[56phil]

2D desktop ... eight of them.:)

[darkhatter]

2D desktop ... eight of them.:)

can we hear the story on how you got all these? What kind of desk do you have?

can we get a shot of this, I need a good laugh.

[InsomniacUK]

I've been using Beryl since I installed Edgy, until one day it just went nuts and stopped working, I had to uninstall it. No programs would start with it running.

[23meg]

Using Beryl, with options and keyboard shortcuts adjusted to fit my Metacity defaults. No cube (plane instead), no wobbly windows. No crashes except a reproducible Totem crash with audio visualizations.

[catanzag]

I typically use compiz, though I have to disable some cpu consuming effect like wobbly; 3D experience, transparency and cube are very amazing!!!

last weekend I upgraded to Beryl, I find it a slight more stable and less cpu consuming (eccective tweaks or barely impression?), so I reactivated some animations that I had previously not enabled in compiz.

Wow!!!

[Zaggy]

2D,
Beryl/Compiz
- uses up too much resources
- isn't as stable as I would like
- makes me unable to play games unless I use the nonXgl script

+ looks awesome though <:

[ShadowVlican]

i love eye candy, and when it's accelerated using an idle graphics card.... WHY NOT :-D

it's about time the graphics card was put to use ](*,)

[songo]

it was fun setting it up on my friend's laptop. he's excited about it. i just converted him to linux and because of beryl he's spending more time on ubuntu than with xp. and he wants to show it off to his coleagues. great! more peoples to linux, so eye-candy doing his work.
for me, i need things to get off my way quickly, so i'm still 2d

[almahtar]

Beryl here.

I also turned off the wobbly - not my style. For those that haven't upgraded to 1.3, I have to say it's got some great new features. That was a fast release: I'm impressed. I have a VERY underpowered Intel graphics chipset with only 64 MB of shared ram, and it only slows down when I have just way too many windows open at a time. I mean, this graphics chip is even less powerful than the ATI xPress 200M, which is known to be darn weak. Battlefield and Counter Strike: Source won't even start up on this thing in either Windows or Linux, yet Beryl can do some amazing stuff and only slow down once in a while.

There are still a few bugs, but they don't occur very often.

[BOBSONATOR]

I love my beryl, and kiba-dock, very stable for me, very practical, runs smooth, and gets tons of ooh-ahhs.

[Get_Ya_Wicked_On]

Yep, I use Beryl. But with AIGLX so like I'm sure many before have said I can switch back & forth.

Mostly use 2-D for wine apps and some programs (like audacity | ?) that don't play nice.

Ever since AIGLX it's NEVER crashed on me, and is not much slower on my ATI X300.

Now XGL... oh god, not a good first experience. I'm thankful I stuck with it.

[fuscia]

just dumped it. sort of pointless, at this stage.

[dbbolton]

well, i dont have a monitor. my brain just connects through wi-mind.

[fuscia]

my brain just connects through wi-mind.

did you have any trouble getting the sharp-stick drivers installed?

[dasunst3r]

I turn XGL+Beryl if there's a need to impress people with the effects and stuff. Other than that, I keep it off to impress people with how quick Linux is with getting things done.

And I'm sure this has been mentioned countless times: ATi DRIVERS SUCK!!! The next laptop I'm getting will surely have a nVidia!

[RAV TUX]

Beryl 0.1.3 on Sabayon Linux 3.2.....

No Desktop Accleration

AIGLX Accleration

XGL Accleration

all easy to choose just by selecting what I want at the moment from the Sabayon Linux Desktop Accleration Manager.

[spockrock]

not gonna lie aiglx + nvidia + beryl is amazing. there is little impact on ram, and cpu.....so yeah..... I dont mind running it because my system run like a dream so.....bleh to vista.

[BOBSONATOR]

I turn XGL+Beryl if there's a need to impress people with the effects and stuff. Other than that, I keep it off to impress people with how quick Linux is with getting things done.

And I'm sure this has been mentioned countless times: ATi DRIVERS SUCK!!! The next laptop I'm getting will surely have a nVidia!


What gfx card do you have?

My Mobility 9000 works like a dream!

[macogw]

I was informed today that on Edgy AIGLX is installed by default which means no trying to force XGL to work. Since XGL was the downfall of my attempts at making Compiz work on Dapper, I went and installed Beryl right away. I love it!

[DarkN00b]

I use Beryl but I don't have it run at startup. I like to be able to use my machine for useful things, then play with it when I'm done. :D Although...the cube desktop and various ways of switching between windows does make for a unique way of visualising your workflow, so its not all just eye candy.

[olejorgen]

I tried compiz last week, but it was way too bugged..
My windowskey hotkeys broke!? problems with maximizing, crashes, unable to play wc3 etc.. But At least I managed to install it this time :) Early in autum I had to do a reinstall after a failed atempt :P

I guess I'll give some months to mature before trying again

[Onyros]

Heeeey... the abacus is catching up on Compiz :P

[iPirates]

Noob exploring the eye-candy options -- i've read that sticking with a simple 2D desk top is the way to go, but if i try installing beryl/compiz/whatever, can I "uninstall it" or disable it somehow when i've had fun messing around with it?

[darrenm]

Run Beryl-SVN, make it snow and go "wow"

:D

A snowscape with falling snow. Lovely. This is the only snow I'll get to see this year :(

[araz]

Compiz.. seems more light

[Longer]

Compiz.. seems more light I think otherwise than you... In my pc beryl works better.(I have tested compiz for some time)

[ButteBlues]

Compiz.. seems more light
Pretty much.

[mo_roodi]

Beryl, because it was alot easier than Compiz to get working (although I did manage it in the end!).

Plus I can "switch it off" easily but selecting the Metacity Window Manager when I want to (why would I do that? I don't really know!).

[FuturePilot]

Beryl for me. It's sooo cool!

[reiki]

I have Ubuntu Dapper, Ubuntu Edgy, and Kubuntu Edgy all on their own hard drives. I have Beryl on the Ubuntu Edgy and as of last night on the Kubuntu Edgy.

I have to admit I haven't used it much. I thought of it as eye candy and eye candy alone. I do like the desktop switcher using the scroll wheel though. Someone tell me what's USEFUL in Beryl besides that desktop switcher. No I'm not being sarcastic. It seems to have LOTS of settings. Some appear to only be preferences for the candy, but I am absolutely willing to admit I may have missed another feature LIKE the desktop switcher.

It does not honestly tax my system noticeably so I CAN leave it on. But when I play WoW in Wine I noticed it was cutting my frame rates in half if Beryl was running. I understand newer versions may address that.

Like others I have shut it off after playing with it and deciding it really didn't do anything to make me more productive. And turned it back on when I was bored and wanted to shake a wobbly window.

[chestnut1969]

Compiz for me; it just runs like a dream. Fast, slick and silky smooth.

For some reason that I have never been able to resolve, Beryl runs like a complete dog on my system, although it is not really underspecified.

[old_geekster]

I am using the standard desktop at present. I had "Compiz" installed and it worked great, except for making me a bit nauseated at times. However, I installed the latest nVidia driver, 1.0-9746, and it caused problems. So, I did a clean install and started over.

I simply don't have the expertise to troubleshoot problems in Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 at this point. I feel that the latest driver is more important for performance.