Nvidia

If you have Nvidia consider yourself fairly lucky in that regard.You want to get:
- nvidia proprietary source driver,
- xserver-xgl from these apt sources (add them to /etc/apt/sources.list) http://beerorkid.com/compiz/,
- The Beryl packages

ATI

FGLRX
This may end up being a little more of a challenge. If you can get the ATI proprietary driver of 8.29 or greater, you can use XGL. The current ATI proprietary driver is 8.31. My card (9200 SE) seems to only work under the 8.28 driver. If you can install the newest proprietary drivers, get those to work using regular X, and THEN try to install Xgl. Beryl and Compiz will not work under the X 3D implemetation (called AIGLX) with the proprietary fglrx driver at the moment because the driver lacks the necessary extensions.

ATI open source drivers:
Fortunately, if your card does NOT run on the fglrx drivers, the open source drivers that come with most current distros of debian and ubuntu run a lot of ATI cards with direct rendering out of the box. You need to make some changes to /etc/X11/xorg.conf like XAAnopixmapssomethingerother to no and a
section "extensions"
option "composite" "true"
endsection
and that should do it.
Then all you need is to install beryl. Unfortunately I've found most of the cool water effects don't work, and fullscreen video doesn't seem to work either, but the wobbly windows, desktop cube etc stuff and task switching abilities are still pretty handy and visually appealing.

Xgl notes:
Getting Xgl to work properly takes a little doing. You have to make changes to your /etc/gdm/gdm.conf.

Once Xgl is running, glxinfo will say:
direct rendering: no

but hardware acceleration is in fact working in Xgl. glxinfo is not reliable for that piece of information.

Beryl notes:
The real test is, once you start compiz or beryl, the display will either crash horribly if your card is not well supported (ATI WE ARE LOOKING AT YOU) or look absolutely beautiful. That's not to say that all ATI cards are not well supported, it's just anything older than a few years is better off using the radeon open source version of the driver and AIGLX.

using the http://beerorkid.com/compiz/ sources, you need to install the dapper version if your libc6 is less than version 2.3.6. You can check with:

dpkg -l|grep libc6

Then you install:

apt-get install beryl-manager beryl beryl-core beryl-plugins-data beryl-dbus beryl-plugins beryl-settings emerald beryl-dev emerald-themes
or ubuntu
sudo apt-get install beryl-manager beryl beryl-core beryl-plugins-data beryl-dbus beryl-plugins beryl-settings emerald beryl-dev emerald-themes

This will install Beryl on your system.
Once you have either AIGLX or Xgl running, run the application by running "beryl-manager"

It's all still a tad bit unstable, and it breaks sometimes. Xgl is honestly the best way to go if you can though, and it is by far the best looking once beryl is running.

Anyways, I'm posting this because I'm tired of typing. If there are typos I'll fix it later
comments

craziness abounds - Monday, December 4, 2006 11:15 am

I went to Brandy's birthday party this weekend, and then Bobby came to visit. I tried to record some vocals, but that came out kinda blah. My vocal chords are out of practice. I hate the way my voice sounds on a recording too, but that could be at least partially due to the fact that one typically hears their own voice more than any other. I need to practice singing, not just cookie monstering the vocals. I am so out of practice. So today is my second week at Sourcefire. It is a really cool place. It's about 7 minutes driving from my house. I never have to get on a highway. That is, it's 7 minutes in really bad traffic. On a good traffic day, I can make it in about 5. I have been working with AIGLX, Xgl, and Beryl lately a lot. I have Beryl running on my work and home desktop, and my laptop. I cannot seem to get Xgl running on my home desktop though. I think the ATI card in it is not supported very well by ATI's drivers. Fuck you ATI. They're drivers are the biggest goddamn pain in my ass. Nvidia's drivers are fabulous and require very very little in the way of extra work to get up and running. Did I tell you my job provides catered lunch to me? It's pretty awesome.
comments

parsley tea - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 11:22 pm

(11:14:43 PM) p337: parsley tea?
(11:14:47 PM) p337: I have never had that
(11:15:22 PM) Killy: real good!
(11:17:15 PM) Killy: our 1 cup of boiling water
over 2 teaspoons chopped parsley
and leave to infuse for 5 minutes
Then strain and sweeten with a
little honey.
A cup of hot parsley tea once a day
is recommended.
(11:17:29 PM) Killy: Personally i simmer/boil the parsley in the water for 10-20 minutes and then strain it.
(11:17:33 PM) Killy: But i found that online
(11:18:06 PM) Killy: Its supposed to be good if you have cramps or digestive problems.
(11:20:19 PM) Killy: It contains three times as much vitamin C as oranges, and twice as much iron as spinach
(11:20:21 PM) Killy: the internet says. comments

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