Beryl. Take 2.
Posted by ubuntufan on April 6, 2007
In case you haven’t read, I received my new T40 the other day. I decided to install Ubuntu Feisty on it instead of Edgy, mainly because I read that it had built in support for XGL and Beryl/Compiz goodies. Once installed, I started poking around. Navigating to system->preferences, I noticed a new option called Desktop Effects
This worked! Well it sort of worked. I was getting odd behavior where menu items weren’t showing up in some windows. NOTHING was showing up in a terminal, I mean not even typed text. But hey, the windows wobbled and the cube was there. I figured that I was on the right track. So for fun, I fed The Google “Feisty T40″ to see what got regurgitated . The first hit I got was a link to a thread on the Ubuntu Forums telling the requester, who was having the same issue, to type the following 2 commands.
gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/hsize 4
gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/number_of_desktops 1
I figured it was worth a shot. BAM! It worked. I like these cool effects, I’m a eye candy weenie I suppose. For a couple of days I was happy…then I thought I’d give full blown Beryl a shot. I mean, I’m basically there right?
So this morning my Dad and I have a 9:00am tee time. As I sit here drinking my coffee, I opened up a terminal window and type.
sudo apt-get install beryl beryl-manager emerald-themes
After a few minutes I try to launch beryl-manager…….VIOLA! It works. Now I don’t know what I was missing with my last T40, but I couldn’t get this to work for anything. The folks working on Feisty have done an outstanding job putting this together and I’m thankful.
On a side note, I hear that the shipit site was down with a message that they would be back shortly shipping shiny new Feisty CDs, but I can’t verify that as it appears to be back to normal now.
Here’s a screenshot.
Dale
pookito said
I was thinking about the samething. I did not know if the software was installed by default. But now, thanks to you I know where everything is. This is like you did the homework for me.
Thanks.
ubuntufan said
Glad you found it useful. I’m currently doing a distro upgrade from edgy to feisty on my latitude D600…I’ll post details once it’s done.
Jon said
Nice post. How smooth did Beryl run on the T40?
ubuntufan said
It runs pretty smooth. If you add transparency to the cube, you will notice a marked decrease in performance when spinning. Other than that, it’s great!
Dale
Alvaro said
Excellent to know!! I have a T40 and have tried to manually install Beryl con Edgy, but it is complicated. I will install Feisty and follow your steps.
Thanks!
Alvaro
Brian said
I too am using Feisty on a Thinkpad T40. Beryl runs great on here and I finally figured out Emerald themes (duh!). Anyway…I recently said goodbye to XP (on this T40). Ubuntu runs great on T40s!
Dan said
I’m currently running feisty also, but on a T40P, everything is working great. one thing i’m still working on is the PPTP, to vpn back to my office at work. beryl is mediocre, i will see about upgrading to compiz fusion. you all have got to check it out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481314
John said
I currently have Ubuntu running on my T40p which is the performance model. A little more graphics power and a 1.6ghz processor. I have tried Beryl and loved it and now I have tried Compiz Fusion and love too! I would deficiently give it a try! I all runs pretty well on this 3 or 4 year old machine except for blur effects which slows the machine down a lot.
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