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4KvRMU7Nnv
October 29th, 2006, 04:32 PM
Hey! I'm a new member of Ubuntu forums! I'm also fairly new to Ubuntu as well. I'm using edgy and it's looking great.

The purpose of this post is to discourage people from using Xgl with Beryl. Yes, it does look cool. I have tried it several times and I truly wish that I could use it on my computer. There are problems that I cannot tolerate. Sometimes, randomly, it will not work. One problem that I had on occasion was when I logged in, all the window boarders were appearing and disappearing quickly. Several other things failed whenever this happened and it was impossible to use the computer. Each time that happened I had to restart X.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when the computer randomly crashes, something is not right. It worries me because I really don't like the idea of my Ubuntu not being stable when the default setting works perfectly.

I don't want people to hate me for this because I am a noob and don't know what I'm talking about. I have messed with different settings and setups of xgl over about 16 installs of ubuntu. :-? I'm really tired of messing with it and it seems that there will always be little problems. If I'm wrong, tell me, but for now I think I'll stay away from it and I would recommended to anyone new to Ubuntu to stay away as well.

meng
October 29th, 2006, 04:36 PM
Thanks for sharing your experience. I've never even been tempted to try XGL, and I'm happy to wait until it's more dveloped before I adopt it. While I also feel that newcomers to Ubuntu are best advised to keep things simple (walk before you run), in the end everyone is free to pursue their curiosity, and bling is very seductive! What I'm saying is that I wouldn't expect your advice to dissuade users from trying it for themselves.

taurus
October 29th, 2006, 04:37 PM
As far as I know, Beryl is a beta and when it's a beta, it means it will crash or freeze every now and then. Again, some people get it to work beautifully while others can't even get it to boot!!! Therefore, if you need your machine to do some serious work, then don't even messing about with beryl, xgl, or any other goodies/eye candies right now.

Move to Cafe.

PriceChild
October 29th, 2006, 04:39 PM
I completely agree!

Xgl,beryl, compiz are all bits of software in heavy development. Xgl hasn't got that long left IMO with the introduction of AIGLX into xorg7.1

NONE of these are beginners subjects! I have moved countless threads from beginners to general help to try 1. give them better help & 2. shield compeltely new users from something that will break their system first time.

I think i'll leave this thread here though ;) - but seems like taurus moved it instead ;)

Pricey

chaosgeisterchen
October 29th, 2006, 04:44 PM
XGL will surely die. AIGLX is the future and very stable. The factor of instability is excessive usage of 3D-accelerated desktop features or in short terms: Beryl.

ComplexNumber
October 29th, 2006, 04:50 PM
XGL will surely die. AIGLX is the future and very stable.
i've heard that too. one of the reasons is that XGL is a hacked Xorg whereas AIGLX is nothing more than a plugin for Xorg. when Xorg gets updated with the necessary additions, XGL will be superfluous.

maniacmusician
October 29th, 2006, 04:52 PM
but doesn't aiglx only work with open source drivers? or is this a misconception? unfortunately, open source drivers aren't cutting it for some people at the moment...neither open nor proprietary work for me so i'm out of luck for the moment.

chaosgeisterchen
October 29th, 2006, 04:53 PM
The nVidia beta drivers are not open source and they work perfectly with AIGLX. Need I say more?

bodhi.zazen
October 29th, 2006, 04:54 PM
I am sorry you had trouble.


The purpose of this post is to discourage people from using Xgl with Beryl.

You should not discourage others. Just state why Xgl is not for you.

Xgl is known to be "buggy" and IMO is in development.

When you run Linux you have a choice of stability vs. bleeding edge. When running bleeding edge applications you should be willing to accept a few bugs if not outright crashes.


I don't know about the rest of you, but when the computer randomly crashes, something is not right. It worries me because I really don't like the idea of my Ubuntu not being stable when the default setting works perfectly.

Unlike Windows, the problems you are describing are not causing any "damage" to your hardware, it is just a software crash.

If you run bleeding edge you should be willing to debug and file bug reports with developers.

In my experience, although they may be "geeky" developers are typically very helpful.


I don't want people to hate me for this because I am a noob

LOL :lol: No worries. Ubutnu is noob friendly. Welcome to Linux.

My advice is to learn a little about Linux before you run bleeding edge. Personally I have a "production" Linux install I depend on and do not fuss with.

I "play" on several experimental partitions, and have broken Ubuntu more then once. If, however, I break one of these patitions no worries.

If I find an improvement that I consider stable, I will install it into production.

HTH

CatKiller
October 29th, 2006, 04:55 PM
but doesn't aiglx only work with open source drivers? or is this a misconception?

I installed Beryl with the beta nVidia drivers on my friend's computer with no problems. So I guess you're misinformed, to some extent.

xpod
October 29th, 2006, 04:56 PM
Well i sure wanted to try it all out as soon as i got Ubuntu up and running back in july but came to the conclusion that leaving it till i had at least got my head around the basics would mabey be the best bet....

Now 3 months or so later i still aint got much of a clue but i did somehow manage to get all that stuff working ok......both in dapper with XGL and here in edgy with AIGLX...Made a mess sussing it out but that was part of the fun.
Mabey you too will find it all a bit easier if you give it a little time??

Personally i like beryl a whole lot beta than my plain old desktop.;)
Great stuff....good luck

4KvRMU7Nnv
October 29th, 2006, 04:58 PM
Yes, Meng, I agree, regardless of what I say, I'm sure people will still try it out for themselves. After all, first hand is the best way to experience anything. Another thing, I'm not even sure what I have tried in the past concerning Xgl and AIGLX. I understand that AIGLX is just an accessory to Xorg but I don't quite know which one I've tried. I might have used them both. Although I seem to recall one time on one of them I had to completely replace the Xorg file, so I'm assuming that one was Xgl. Am I right? But the other time, the time I used Beryl, I never had to do that. Was that AIGLX?

Thanks for noticing this thread. I know I can fit in with fellow Ubunteneers! Didn't expect you guys to be THIS cool though! Brings new meaning to Ubuntu for me.

Reshin
October 29th, 2006, 05:01 PM
I installed Beryl with the beta nVidia drivers on my friend's computer with no problems. So I guess you're misinformed, to some extent.

I had no problems with the drivers from official repos

CatKiller
October 29th, 2006, 05:07 PM
I had no problems with the drivers from official repos

Excellent. That's good to know for when I install Beryl on my computer. Thanks.

meng
October 29th, 2006, 05:09 PM
I know I can fit in with fellow Ubunteneers! Didn't expect you guys to be THIS cool though! Brings new meaning to Ubuntu for me.
Give us time, I'm sure we can disappoint! :) I could well be wrong and your advice may resonate with some newcomers, in which case I'm sure you will have done them a BIG favor.

maniacmusician
October 29th, 2006, 05:18 PM
I read somewhere that the nVidia beta drivers are different, in that they have AIGLX built into their structure. ie, even in dapper, where there is no built in AIGLX, the beta drivers would work installing aiglx, because it was built into the driver. So that's a little different, I think.

What about ATI cards?

fuscia
October 29th, 2006, 05:26 PM
if you want to play with beryl, without the risk, you can always use the live version of sabayon linux.

sloggerkhan
October 29th, 2006, 05:50 PM
I have beryl w/ xgl and I must admit it's pretty buggy... I wouldn't recomend it if you are trying to be productive, but if you want to play around, it's a great time waster. Guess that's how betas are.

4KvRMU7Nnv
October 29th, 2006, 05:59 PM
I have beryl w/ xgl and I must admit it's pretty buggy... I wouldn't recomend it if you are trying to be productive, but if you want to play around, it's a great time waster. Guess that's how betas are.

Yeah, thats the message I was trying to give. Its fun, but its buggy. We wouldn't want to have newbies like me or others be discouraged from ubuntu because xgl/aiglx didn't work on their system correctly.

bodhi.zazen
October 29th, 2006, 06:20 PM
if you want to play with beryl, without the risk, you can always use the live version of sabayon linux.

Good advice.

spockrock
October 29th, 2006, 06:40 PM
The nVidia beta drivers are not open source and they work perfectly with AIGLX. Need I say more?

actually no, the nvidia beta drivers allow for beryl and compiz to run without aiglx or xgl. This is due to the driver supporting GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. But in principal it works and behaves like aiglx if I am not mistaken.

I wouldn't dismiss XGL that quickly, it still has its advantages over aiglx, granted if aiglx does support proprietary drivers then I could see it killing XGL.

The difference from my understanding is XGL is layer over Xorg, and aiglx is an extention to xorg, so XGL accelerates everything where as aiglx does not. From using the nvidia driver and XGL the only difference I have noticed is that the icon text looks different on the desktop under XGL, namely better.

So more or less I still think aiglx/nvidia is better because it uses less memory, and video playback is easier on my cpu. From my experience XGL uses about 200MB of ram more, and on video playback runs my dual core at 60% compared to 15%. I ran it at the same settings, 3200x1600 with 0xAA 1xAF. More or less aiglx is superior for me cause it uses much less resources....

4KvRMU7Nnv
October 29th, 2006, 06:57 PM
another problem that I encountered was that keyboard shortcuts no longer worked, the GNOME theme manager crashed every time I tried to change its theme, and sometimes when I opened an application the window extended over the bounderies of my screen. These little things led me to believe that it was less stable than desireable. Did you have any of these problems?

TheWizzard
October 29th, 2006, 09:44 PM
Yeah, thats the message I was trying to give. Its fun, but its buggy. We wouldn't want to have newbies like me or others be discouraged from ubuntu because xgl/aiglx didn't work on their system correctly.

mmm, indeed alsmost every tread about xgl is from people who just installed ubuntu and experienced problems with xgl. on the other hand, there seems to be a lack of information for new users. in the donload section there is something about "Choosing an Ubuntu Release", but this doen't state clearly: if you're new use dapper!
maybe there shoulb be a sticky in the beginner talk section explaining people how linux works regarding beta's and stuff. this is difficult if you're used to windows. it's quite logical that people who want to give ubuntu a try are also curious to see what xgl looks like.
as for myself, i need my computer for work, so i wouldn't try xgl or edgy if i hadn't a week off to solve problems. in the meanwhile i'm very happy with a very stable and useful dappe :cool:

PriceChild
October 29th, 2006, 09:50 PM
I have beryl w/ xgl and I must admit it's pretty buggy... I wouldn't recomend it if you are trying to be productive, but if you want to play around, it's a great time waster. Guess that's how betas are.You don't reccomend it because its unstable, or just fun to play with?

hey... if you want fun to play with... install kiba-dock!!!

sloggerkhan
October 30th, 2006, 07:33 PM
Well, after about a week of running, albeit somewhat unstable running, my edgy install died out of the blue. And I mean it was REALLY dead. Guessing it was related to beryl somehow, but not really sure. I'm now doing a reinstall (from dapper disk) because for some reason the edgy install disk won't work correctly on my comp.
**
(Side issue: on edgy disk no matter what I do the disk works, but even custom boot commands can't get the monitor to display when it finishes loading... I can hear the sound effects and all. Just can't see anything. I thought maybe it was trying to use an external monitor, but every single monitor I hook up says "mode unsupported. please change settings" or something to that effect. It does it in safe mode and regular mode, and even specifying a specific resolution. Quite irksome.)
(and it displays perfectly until the end of the loading bar, then blanks.)
**
Now I'm deciding if I should use dist upgrade to get edgy again.

kuja
October 30th, 2006, 07:55 PM
XGL will surely die. AIGLX is the future and very stable. The factor of instability is excessive usage of 3D-accelerated desktop features or in short terms: Beryl.
Quite true. I had once used XGL (no compiz/beryl nonsense, just XGL, I had my reasons). It was _VERY_ stable. Strangely enough, more stable than Xorg when it came to transparency. (I had just wanted to test to see if it would be more stable with transparency/shadows/fading than Xorg, and it was. Weird eh?)

prizrak
October 30th, 2006, 08:52 PM
Well, after about a week of running, albeit somewhat unstable running, my edgy install died out of the blue. And I mean it was REALLY dead. Guessing it was related to beryl somehow, but not really sure. I'm now doing a reinstall (from dapper disk) because for some reason the edgy install disk won't work correctly on my comp.
**
(Side issue: on edgy disk no matter what I do the disk works, but even custom boot commands can't get the monitor to display when it finishes loading... I can hear the sound effects and all. Just can't see anything. I thought maybe it was trying to use an external monitor, but every single monitor I hook up says "mode unsupported. please change settings" or something to that effect. It does it in safe mode and regular mode, and even specifying a specific resolution. Quite irksome.)
(and it displays perfectly until the end of the loading bar, then blanks.)
**
Now I'm deciding if I should use dist upgrade to get edgy again.

Try xorg.conf editing

XGL was never stable for me, actually it's not true it was quite stable. It would work for 1 hour and then die, can't get more stable than that ;) AIGLX does work quite well on my crappy old laptop with Beryl. I do favor XGL over AIGLX because XGL is a true OpenGL X server as opposed to a compositing extension that uses OpenGL. When fully developed XGL has the potential of freeing up the CPU completely from any kind of video activities.

sloggerkhan
November 1st, 2006, 02:35 PM
When I said my system got fried, I meant it. My xorg.conf was OK for about a week, lol. And when my comp crashed, it reall crashed, and I couldn'd find an obvious way to fix it without a reinstall. In fact, I now have some sort of non critical error even after I boot with a complete reinstall. I'll write it down when I boot next time... probably should to try to fix it. And I guess ati's been updating its proprietary drivers in the last couple of months?

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=300

I'm pretty sure the latest was still 8.28 back in september...

prizrak
November 1st, 2006, 02:44 PM
And I guess ati's been updating its proprietary drivers in the last couple of months?

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=300

I'm pretty sure the latest was still 8.28 back in september...
Yes ATI has been pretty good lately better than nVidia in some ways.

nVidia beta drivers do work well with Beryl, when they work that is ;)

sloggerkhan
November 1st, 2006, 02:53 PM
off topic:
I think it's that AMD bought them out. Its nice that they finally added a graphical control panel. I don't think that existed last time I installed my video card. That said, i think ATI cards still have problems.

graficus
December 25th, 2006, 05:01 AM
I've just tried it on my Fedora 6 installation, pretty cool effects (ATI 9600 Radeon).
It takes longer to load session, after that its just as quick. The rotating cube is really something ;)

I wish there was some control over the speed of effects, as watching the menus take time to roll out in a fancy way gets old quickly. I'm not sure what I got, XGL or whatever else, it just says "activate window effects" in there.

I'm considering dumping Fedora in favor of Ubuntu on my laptop, so both computers are the same. It was bad enough to spend quite a few hours to find out about apt-get and other stuff, I dont need Fedora to tell me that "graficus is not in a list of sudoers". whatever that means. Will just use Ubuntu and learn it well, especially with the kind of community help no other distibution has.

By the way, how do you properly apt-get aiglx?

spockrock
December 25th, 2006, 05:59 AM
aiglx is built into edgy, err well xorg 7.0 I believe.......

mushroom
December 25th, 2006, 08:16 AM
The difference between AIGLX/NVidia and Xgl:

AIGLX merely enables OpenGL compositing window managers to work on top of X.Org, meaning objects on screen (windows, panels, etc.) are composited by the video card instead of the CPU, which would be a very costly operation in terms of resources (CPU cycles and RAM hit rock bottom here). However, it's only compositing; every other operation (namely, the actual drawing of the windows) has the same participation from the CPU. This setup is analogous to Quartz Extreme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor) in Mac OS X.

Xgl is X.Org modified to be an OpenGL application itself, meaning that every visual operation is handled by the video card ("hardware-accelerated"). Whereas AIGLX/Beryl merely sends compositing to the video card, every action on-screen is handled by the video card in Xgl. Unfortunately, Xgl currently has no means of running by itself, so it basically sits atop a regular X server like a fullscreen window. This hinders performance considerably, but when Xegl, the stand-alone incarnation of Xgl, comes out, everything will zoom. The eventual Xegl is analogous to the not-quite-ready-for-primetime Quartz 2D Extreme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)) in Mac OS X.

Both have the same goal, that is to have an entirely hardware-accelerated X server, but they're going about it in different ways. Xgl started from making the objective real (entire X server is accelerated), but with a few catches (it runs on top of a non-accelerated X server). AIGLX started by making the side-effects work (compositing) with little to no catch. I think AIGLX's method makes for a smoother transition, but when both projects mature, performance is all that will really matter.

Personally I'm going the AIGLX with Beryl way for now, because watching any video is absolutely painful in Xgl. 90% of the time I'm talking out of my ***, though, so please correct me if I got anything wrong.