UPDATE: If you use the Avant Window Navigator, I have just posted 9 AWN Themes. Also see 9 GRUB Splash Images here on Queer Visions.
My frequent trips to the Ubuntu forums often bring me in contact with posts about the visual wonder that is the Beryl composite window manager (now known as Compiz Fusion). I decided to take the plunge and see if my experience lived up to all the hype. In short, it has. I now find working with a regular desktop window manager limiting. Though I love the Gnome desktop environment, 3D desktops are so freeing it’s difficult to go back to anything less.
See for yourself!
(hat tip: BastionPL)
Installing XGL + Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy Eft with an ATI card is relatively easy once you get the fglrx video driver working properly (that can be the tricky part). By the way, I use Trevino’s Beryl SVN repository. However, when I tried to enable the ANIMATED SKYDOME feature in Beryl-Manager under Desktop / Desktop Cube / Skydome, I had trouble. Browsing the Beryl forums led me to the realization that I needed to use a PNG image with a specific resolution ratio. I’m still at a loss as to the specifics beyond that but I have found a formula which works for me on my laptop with a screen resolution of 1280×800. The formula: a PNG image at a resolution of 4096×1024. That’s it.
FYI: I’m on a Dell Inspiron e1505 with the Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo processor/s, an ATI Radeon Mobile X1300 video card with a 15.4″ TrueLife Wide Screen. I dual boot WindowsXP (soon Vista) and Ubuntu Edgy Eft.
And now, for your skydoming pleasure, I have created eight 4096×1024 PNG images for you to use freely. A few of them would work well on a dual screen set up (big desktop) as well. Download them and try them out. I bet you’ll fall in love with at least one. Enjoy and please leave a comment of thanks if you use them or if you have any questions. ~Seamus7
2. Cloudy Moon
3. Bucolic Beauty (hat tip: KoL, StudioTwentyEight, stock.xchange)
6. Mind Buddha
Dell computers in general SUCK, their computers over heat and they
all can burst into flames. Dell rips the consumers off with their
pricing and selling equipment that has bad components in them.
they were in the news last year about their components beeing bad
in all their computers. Their customer servise is bad and
if you upgrade or change anything on their computers your warrenty is VOID.
en esta pagina tambien hay y muchos para escojer
http://adictoslinux.jimdo.com/
WRT having to use a PNG image as a background, have you gone in to the Beryl-Manager, in to the Image Format section and enabled Jpeg? You’d probably be able to hugely reduce the size of the images if you could convert to Jpeg.
I’m actually running the Compiz Fusion at the moment rather than Beryl (much more stable than my original Beryl install, and Fusion has pretty much all of the Beryl plugins plus a few more) and I know I definitely had to enable Jpeg as only Png was enabled by default.
As for sizes, my guess would be that it has to be powers of two. I’ve done texture work in games (Dawn of War, to be specific) and they use powers of two (normally 512×512) for their textures because that’s what the graphics card works with. It’d explain the 4096×1024 as well.
Do you have How To on SKYDOME for NVIDIA + DAPPER
muy buenas, very cool pictures 3d
Znupi, your question has already been answered in the comments above.
Where did you get the nice autumn-leaves texture? (I suppose it’s the Snow plugin you’re using there) Could you email it to me please?
Thanks
Quite an amazing array of desktop fun. What’s the point though? Well I guess it would be of better help since the human mind works better in a 3 dimensional space. So all those extra desktops depicted by a cube do have a productive function.
The cool effects? Well they make it easier to compute, or maybe even help be productive, if only a little. Plus most people customize their desktop with all sorts of things. Otherwise we’d still be on black screen terminals, which are way more productive. Anyway all of these amazing effects and plugins look like they’re rendered flawlessy, without trying to kill the graphics card. It seems to use Linux’s superior resource utilization which gives it its fantastic efficiency.
Of course many people seem to think Vista is pretty looking. All it is is a new skin and some sloppy rendering techniques. Which, by the way, use way too many resources to even be justified. If only there was a way to distriubute Linux and these cool looking fx for everyone to see. Hmmmm………
John White: The blowing leaves effect is an experimental plugin for Beryl (the last time I checked). You must to download it separately and enable it. I think the plugin is called Snow within Beryl Manager under the Plugins Settings. Within the Snow settings you have a dozen or so textures to use but most of them are snowflakes. The YouTube video I embedded at the top of this page shows the Snow plugin using a flower texture and also a leaf texture. I would guess that the creator of this video, BastionPL (see link next to video above), created the leaf texture himself as it wasn’t a default texture.
How to you get the blowing leaf and flower at the wallpaper?
FaeLLe: The video was found on YouTube. See the BastionPL link above it. But… I know the tab flip effect about which you’re asking. I couldn’t figure that one out until I found the shortcut key for it. Sorry, I currently have XGL/Beryl uninstalled but I remember that it’s something like alt+G or ctrl+alt+G in order to Group windows… then you have to Tab them by using another shortcut key. It’s just a matter of finding the shortcut key listing in Beryl Manager. Try looking for Group Plugin settings. Good luck!
For those running ATI Mobility X Series cards, please sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/xSeAILGX/petition.html
How do you do the effect in Beryl which is show at 3 minutes and 50 seconds?
The reversing of windows effect, same window having two sides. Similar to the Project Looking glass project by Sun.
Please do tell us.
Thanks.
Thank you very mush
I tried beryl with AIGLX for a while, but that chewed up processor.
That was with a Radeon, but I never did get fglrx to work with beryl and xgl.
Then, I got an nvidia card. Nvidia has great acceleration, and beryl takes absolutely no processor anymore.
It seems that it depend on hardware and drivers,especially video card. Hope it will become more powerful and beautiful…..
I’ve tried Envy (http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html), and that doesn’t really work so well. The proprietary ATI drivers that it installs are not particularly well accelerated, and I don’t think they actually have a compositing extension (hence part of why they aren’t included with Ubuntu). The nVidia proprietary drivers do, however, support this and are very easy to install/configure using Automatix2 (http://www.getautomatix.com).
Can anybody point me toward a good tutorial for installing fglrx and configuring it properly? I’ve tried the one on the Beryl installation wiki page but it seems to be no good for my video card.
Thanks!
Looks so cool
That’s the kind of video I would show to my friends before of showing them Beryl on my own laptop to let them play with it.
Fucking A!
i find your views on Christianity and religion a breath of fresh air in an otherwise close minded cellar of humanity. Fight fire with fire, you actually think about something rather than just accepting what’s written in an ancient book as the law. It’s nice to hear someone use their minds. Screw the fundamentalist mystics.
“Installing XGL + Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy Eft with an ATI card is relatively easy once you get the fglrx video driver working properly (that can be the tricky part)”
-It does not have to be dificult:
http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html
Hope it helps, and great work on the skydomes!
Niels
wow! that’s cool
i recently tried beryl+XGL on my Kubuntu desktop
but yesterday i installed gdm and gnome.. and know my beryl installation is ruined…
*sigh
Hi all ..
… as far as overheating.. I use GKrellM to control my fans … they kick in whenever the temp rises beyond a certain trigger point. Check it out!
again.. i didn’t create the video.. see my comment to Markus directly above.
kuriharu: thanks for nothing
David: where’s the Ubuntu Art Forum specifically?
Dude: Chocolate Cake?
Mike Wright: thanks. even though it says DRI isn’t working after installing XGL+Beryl it actually is.. at least that’s what i’ve read after being concerned about it myself… you must disable Composite in your xorg.conf file, yes?
knottyboy: I installed windowsxp first .. then Ubuntu edgy .. I used the alternative ubuntu installation cd so that I could better control where the boot loader would reside (something like that) … as far as the intel pro wireless 3945??? I also have had trouble with it .. mostly a bug which causes CPU lockups … at this point I simply have disabled it in the BIOS since my laptop rarely ever leaves home and I don’t have a wireless network setup .. I can easily enable it and use it on my windows side though.
Brombomb: yeah those two are my favorites…
Markus: The video wasn’t created by me.. I found it on YouTube and embedded it .. click on the YouTube logo in the video and it will take you to the original URL where you can contact the author about that … The desktop background is here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/33323492/
Jonathon: yeah I will make that clearer. All the images were found images that I manipulated to create the skydomes. unfortunately i don’t remember where I got most of them. thanks.
joe: thanks.
obvious questions.
im running 6.10 at the mo.
whats your bg pic, the how do you get the animated leaves?
what file manager is that?
Is that a zoom effect in the browser, or you with the movie?
I assume these are all new features in eft?
And cheers for the skydomes..
You should credit KoL at StudioTwentyEight for the Bucolic Beauty Wallpaper. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34452503/
Please post how did you achieve all than configuration. Not only the Beryl config, but everything… desktop theme, etc.
Thanks!
Share the eye candy!
Nice skydomes. Im gonna try out the mountains and the moon. Maybe you could give me some tips on the video card driver (ATI Mobility X700 which overheats way too much in Ubuntu)
I have this exact model of dell you have…everything. And I tried my damnedest to get a dual boot of Ubuntu running on my machine. What gave me the most greif was trying to get my intel pro wireless card to configure properly. Even looked for drivers on the intel site that worked with linux. I guess I need to try again. I’d hate to think I’m missing such an awesome visual experience that you are enjoying on twin machines.
kb
I’m family too and feel as strongly about religious hypocracy as you do. Thank you.
I’ve been having trouble getting XGL + Beryl to work on my ATI card. I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 with an ATI Radeon 9000 Mobile. I can’t seem to get both the DRI and Compositing extensions to work at the same time (which seems to be necessary for Beryl to work). Any pointers you can give me? Awesome skydomes, by the way!
I prefer cake over pie.
Sweet! thanks very much. Consider posting on the Ubuntu art forum.
Interesting post on Beryl, though not new.
I must say I’m disappointed with your rants on Christianity. You intend to repay bigotry with more bigotry. I’ve heard a lot of rants from atheists and yours was not any different.
Sad, and frankly, boring.
pretty … especially the buddhas!