On 27/02/07, samwise <samwise@bagshot-row.org> wrote:

I've been using beryl for a bit but I'm not sure I'm getting the best
out of it - it didn't take me much work to install, so I haven't read
that much about it's functions.

I had a bash at installing beryl last night (still playing around till 3.30am, hence bit tired today!). Have to say that it took me a fair bit of work to get it working for the simple reason that I have an ATI graphics card which are reasonably known in the community as being a pain in the backside to get running properly on linux. So it took me a while to get the GLX stuff going. And then when I did finally run up beryl I hit what is clearly a known issue which is the "white screen" problem (try googling beryl white screen!!).

So eventually I got it running with a bit of a workaround which I believe reduces performance. But I must admit that my 256meg ATI x550 makes a pretty good job at running the effects.

So far, the only effects I've found actually useful are the Scale
Effect and the Zoom In ... but not in it's favour are the facts that
my machine is notably slower when scrolling, the Adept Notifier app no
longer lives in the system tray - instead it's taking up valuable room
in the normal taskbar and the snap-to feature so that windows align
themselves with the corner of the screen seems to have gone.

I admit that it was getting very late by the time I got things running enough to play with the settings, but in the few minutes I messed with it I also failed to get windows to snap to edges. Instead they seemed quite happy to wrap across desktops which seems a little pointless to me.

At some point I'll spend some time trying to work the kinks out ...
the two useful effects are actually incredible useful so I'd like to
keep them, if I can.

Not sure it's all that useful but I must say that it is really nice to have properly transparent windows, especially the ability to adjust the transparency quickly and easily using a key and the mouse wheel. Also the feature (I forget the name) which allows you to hover the cursor on a partially hidden window and have the ones in front become transparent so you can see it.

For some reason I never managed to find or switch on the snow effect. Is it good? Has anyone played with the blurring effects? They are pretty, but rather pointless and appear to mess the display up a bit.

Pete