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
April 6, 2007 at 6:17 pm
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.
April 10, 2007 at 8:25 am
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.
April 14, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Nice post. How smooth did Beryl run on the T40?
April 15, 2007 at 9:56 am
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
April 15, 2007 at 10:37 am
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
June 5, 2007 at 9:54 pm
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!
June 26, 2007 at 7:19 pm
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
July 1, 2007 at 6:06 pm
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.