I'm about this > < close from installing beryl as my default window manager. Some of it is eye candy / bling / whatever you want to call it but some of the newer features are useful and remember, it's still pretty much a proof of concept, to show the kind of stuff that's possible with a compositing window manager... The fact that the cube thing etc runs smoothly on my rubbish old laptop is amazing, seeing as mac hardware which effectively does similar eye candy stuff is so expensive and yeah, I do show mac users I know to impress them. Windows users too now that Vista has a bit of eye candy they think it's the bees knees...
And yeah, beryl is a weird name for a project cos it sounds like an old granny name... Heh.
--Simon
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Anyone using beryl? (http://www.beryl-project.org)
I saw a video of it in use on YouTube, looks really nice. I blew away Linux on my "fast" desktop in order to play games, although I managed to get most of my games running with the third-party ATI Radeon drivers, it would hang and stuff, but that's another story.
I run DSL on an old P3 so I'll not be installing beryl anytime soon! :)
Just wondered what others think of it?
Cheers.
-Mark
Simon simon@sionide.net wrote:
I'm about this > < close from installing beryl as my default window manager.
You were this "> <" close before. What happened? :)
Regards,
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.
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.
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.
Peter.
On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 10:43 +0000, samwise wrote:
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,
Hmm interesting, not something I have noticed here. If anything memory consumption aside I'd say my machine actually performs better not worse. Particularly I have not noticed anything wrong with scrolling. I wonder if your packages have the blur plugin enabled by default ? It's the only thing I can think of that would cause problems with scrolling performance.
the Adept Notifier app no longer lives in the system tray - instead it's taking up valuable room in the normal taskbar
Not something I can help you with I am afraid, on gnome here.
and the snap-to feature so that windows align themselves with the corner of the screen seems to have gone.
Depending again on which plugins your packages come with you should find a snapping windows control under window management in the beryl settings manager. However be aware that incorrect settings here play havoc with wobbly windows (which I have disabled anyway because they make me feel "funny")
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.
I am sure there are answers to your specific problems, one thing about beryl is that there are plenty of options to play with :-)
To be honest for the most part (as I think someone else pointed out) Compiz/Beryl is still very much in the conceptual (look what we can do) phase, a lot of packages come with the "fun" effects like window wobble turned on and the more useful plugins disabled (or at least in a state where you have to learn a keyboard shortcut to really appreciate them)
Some genuinely useful features (like the ones you mention, plus the tile modes, trail focus, full screen apps that can be bent out of the way, various ways to keep apps persistent across workspaces etc etc) are really starting to come on now. Even if the default visual effects are a bit too much in some cases.
Hmm interesting, not something I have noticed here. If anything memory consumption aside I'd say my machine actually performs better not worse. Particularly I have not noticed anything wrong with scrolling. I wonder if your packages have the blur plugin enabled by default ? It's the only thing I can think of that would cause problems with scrolling performance.
No blurring - but my machine has long been on the lower-end of the performance scale. :) I believe it may also be something to do with Firefox in particular. I've read a few forum posts with similar issues - it's not all that bad, and Firefox was never amazingly smooth anyway so I can live with it.
Not something I can help you with I am afraid, on gnome here.
As I've been looking at it today, it actually seems to have disappeared completely for now - no idea if that's permanent. I hope not ... ;)
Depending again on which plugins your packages come with you should find a snapping windows control under window management in the beryl settings manager. However be aware that incorrect settings here play havoc with wobbly windows (which I have disabled anyway because they make me feel "funny")
yeah, I did enable the snap-on as default option within the wobbly windows plugin, but I never noticed the difference - it still didn't seem to snap ... I can't enable Snapping Windows under Window Management whilst Wobbly Windows is on, tho.
I am sure there are answers to your specific problems, one thing about beryl is that there are plenty of options to play with :-)
well, after posting this morning, I did some more messing about and worked out how to slow-down the rotation of the cube, which I actually prefer to the fast but jerky default speed on my machine. Adding the 3D Effects was a nice addition, when I messed with the timing again. Also added to my list of keys to memorise, is the Annotate (graffiti!) plugin. Incredibly entertaining to draw stick men when stuck on a boring call. :)
Some genuinely useful features (like the ones you mention, plus the tile modes, trail focus, full screen apps that can be bent out of the way, various ways to keep apps persistent across workspaces etc etc) are really starting to come on now. Even if the default visual effects are a bit too much in some cases.
Right - so far, I haven't spent much time on exploring it so I haven't actually tried a lot of the ones you've mentioned ... It's find to hard descriptions for a lot of them, and the Beryl Settings Manager I have never seems to quite tie up with the one described in the wiki (I have no Snow plugin for example).
Anyway, I'll try out some of your other suggestions when I get some time to play.
Peter.
On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 17:43 +0000, samwise wrote:
No blurring - but my machine has long been on the lower-end of the performance scale. :) I believe it may also be something to do with Firefox in particular. I've read a few forum posts with similar issues - it's not all that bad, and Firefox was never amazingly smooth anyway so I can live with it.
Hmm strange, if you had an easy installation I am assuming you are using AIGLX for the rendering platform. Perhaps it is specific to that as I am using XGL and firefox scrolling is as smooth as it ever was.
yeah, I did enable the snap-on as default option within the wobbly windows plugin, but I never noticed the difference - it still didn't seem to snap ... I can't enable Snapping Windows under Window Management whilst Wobbly Windows is on, tho.
A fair point, not using wobbly windows I didn't notice that. However if I turn on wobble and enable deafult snapping to on and edge attraction it seems to work fine for me. There are some adjustments under Advanced on the wobbly plugin which may be turned too low in your case.
Right - so far, I haven't spent much time on exploring it so I haven't actually tried a lot of the ones you've mentioned ... It's find to hard descriptions for a lot of them, and the Beryl Settings Manager I have never seems to quite tie up with the one described in the wiki (I have no Snow plugin for example).
On ubuntu at least some of the more unstable/unfinished plugins come in a separate package (or actually in my case two extra packages) beryl-plugins-extra and beryl-plugins-unsupported.
Snow and water bring my GFX hardware to it's knees though.
Hmm strange, if you had an easy installation I am assuming you are using AIGLX for the rendering platform. Perhaps it is specific to that as I am using XGL and firefox scrolling is as smooth as it ever was.
AIGLX, yes. I don't know - like I say, I haven't had time to really scratch the surface of it yet. Maybe if I disable the right combination of effects it might speed up - at the end of the day, I'm surprised it works as well as it does.
A fair point, not using wobbly windows I didn't notice that. However if I turn on wobble and enable deafult snapping to on and edge attraction it seems to work fine for me. There are some adjustments under Advanced on the wobbly plugin which may be turned too low in your case.
Yeah, I'm just playing with wobbly windows at the moment - I don't find them as annoying as a lot of people seem to do, so I've left them on for now. I took one look at the number of options in the Advanced dialog and decided I had better uses for my time .. ;) I did increase the snapping distance but it still doesn't feel like it jumps to the corner when I move the window close to it (or at least not as noticably as it does under KWin) - tho I can see the effect when pulling the window away). It'll do until I have time to test all the config possibilities.
On ubuntu at least some of the more unstable/unfinished plugins come in a separate package (or actually in my case two extra packages) beryl-plugins-extra and beryl-plugins-unsupported.
Snow and water bring my GFX hardware to it's knees though.
Yeah, I thought that might be the case - a quick check of Adept confirms it (Kubuntu uses the same ubuntu repositories). I might try installing some new ones this weekend, but I doubt Snow will work - given that water doesn't. I assume that's because my gfx card doesn't support pixel shaders, but I just haven't had time of late to investigate it more thoroughly - I only installed it because I stumbled across a guide a few months ago which someone with the exact same graphics controller as me had confirmed worked easily for them .. and they were right! :)
Plus it takes a while for me to get the key combinations to stick in my head, so I'm still working on remembering the useful ones I know atm ... ;)
Peter.
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
On Wed, 2007-02-28 at 23:17 +0000, Peter Thorpe wrote:
For some reason I never managed to find or switch on the snow effect. Is it good?
You need to have one of the extra plugin packages installed (or at least you do on the ubuntus)
It's ok, snow goes over desktop (but behind the windows) different size flakes. All in all a bit of a waste of time. Actually I think the Snow speed issue on my machine is a configuration one as the snow moves freely if you grab a window and wave it about, but goes into a low framerate judder if you stop moving or release the window.
Has anyone played with the blurring effects? They are pretty, but rather pointless and appear to mess the display up a bit.
The blurring effects did nothing but give me a headache, just reminded me of the pixel lag you got on first gen LCD's. Turned up to high it was like trying to use a machine whilst drunk (not that I mind that effect I'd just rather get drunk to experience it).
Anyway blurred text is my safety indication to tell me that now would not be a good time to log in as root or try an apt-get dist-upgrade to feisty, if the system is blurring stuff for me how am I supposed to tell ?
Pete
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On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 21:18 +0000, Simon wrote:
Windows users too now that Vista has a bit of eye candy they think it's the bees knees...
Of course the key difference here is that no machine I own is capable of running the Vista Aero interface. Yes the admittedly old (but still pretty capable) Nvidia Quadro FX500 in my main machine, is determined to be unable to render Vista's accelerated interface) Yet Beryl can be made to work on a Intel integrated 3D chipset with shared memory.
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Chris Lamb -
Peter Thorpe -
samwise -
Simon -
Wayne Stallwood