customising life

I bought and assembled my parent’s new PC yesterday. I got them a 19in widescreen LCD, which looks gorgeous. I want one!

This was the first time I’ve installed Ubuntu onto a completely fresh machine, no Windows here. Almost flawless setup, except for my bungling of the partitions, and it took next to no time.

Downloading updates over ADSL was not so quick.

Now all I need to do is identify and install any packages that they may need. First important thing is to setup the ability to browse a Windows network, as that is how they will be getting their old data off their old PC. I’ve never done that before, so I will need to work on that. SAMBA I guess??

The only other thing I need to consider is their printer, a problem which I have never had, seeing as I almost never print things out (only PDF printing).

I’ve already installed all the necessary codecs and things to play .mp3’s, .avi’s and DVD’s. Other than that Ubuntu seemed pretty complete for applications. I don’t want to install too much, so I can give my parents a demo of how Synaptic works.

I also think I’ll install some different window managers to give my parents the choice. With the release of XFCE 4.4.0, I think I’ll install xfwm at least (love that native transparency).

I recently went through some RSS feeds checking out some new Beryl features, which look rad. I think my dad was quite interested in Beryl, so I might include that too.

And I also am thinking of putting Metisse on there as well. I’m hoping to give the Mandriva 2007 One Live CD a go today.

Hopefully I’ll have everything just working by the time I take it over, for a seamless transition from Windows to Ubuntu.

I was getting tired of having to wait until I could update to the latest version of Beryl, since it was announced on the 26th of December.

Turns out I had little bit extra in the line for the Beryl repository, which was keeping me from getting any updates. Perhaps it changed after the Beryl site was taken down?

If you’ve been following this post, you may have the same problem. Or you may be smarter than me and decided to act on this a lot earlier.

Anyway, long story short; the correct repository to get the latest version of Beryl is

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main

Not that which I had previously (deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main-edgy)

Edit: If you also want to ensure that the packages are authentic, you’ll need the updated GPG key

wget http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

With the new version of Beryl you get a nicer and more organised settings manager, and some new plugins/toys.

Kayee likes the snow and water effects.

And the 3D desktop effect (as in the windows are 3D off the desktop) is great too.

But seeing as I am just wrapping up watching the entire Stargate series, I just love the ‘beam-up’ animation!

Sadly it doesn’t lend itself to screenshots

(I had a similar problem with the sidekick animation when I first installed Beryl)

This is a cumulation and culmination of several posts now.

I recently was successful installing the latest NVIDIA drivers (v1.0.9269), which support AIGLX.
The next thing that must be done is an edit of the X.org configuration file to enable AIGLX. I have already done this once before.

One final adjustment is necessary for using AIGLX with the NVIDIA drivers. The following line needs to be added to the X.org configuration file in the “Screen” section.

Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “true”

Once that change has been made, you should be able to start an ordinary session (now using AIGLX) and then start Beryl. If you need to install Beryl as well, you can see how I did it a while ago.

You may need to stop the XFCE window manager (xfwm4) first, using these commands.

killall xfwm4
beryl-manager &

Enjoy!

Just mucking about at work again.

So I’ve ruled out AIGLX/Beryl on my work PC, because the proprietary drivers don’t have a particular extension to use AIGLX. However I can still try XGL/Beryl now that I have the fglrx drivers working.

Setting up XGL and Beryl follows almost the same steps I used on my home PC, which uses an NVIDIA card.

The installation of the XGL X server package and Beryl is the same, the only difference between using ATI and NVIDIA, is the XGL options used in the startxgl.sh script. This is the modified script I use for XGL and Beryl (ATI)

#!/bin/sh
Xgl -fullscreen :1 -ac -br -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer &
sleep 4
export DISPLAY=:1
beryl-manager
exec xfce4-session

The first time I started the XGL session, Beryl was acting all weird, the window decorations were flashing on and off. I just killed the process, and started the beryl-manager again, then things were fine.

I’m actually surprised how well it runs on my PC, I didn’t think the video card (ATI R300) would be up to it.

Nice, so now I have eye candy both at home and at work.

Just mucking about at work again.So I’ve ruled out AIGLX/Beryl on my work PC, because the proprietary drivers don’t have a particular extension to use AIGLX. However I can still try XGL/Beryl, if I can get the fglrx drivers to work.

Trying these instructions again, first install the fglrx driver with this command

sudo aptitude install xorg-driver-fglrx

Next we need to reconfigure the Xorg configuration file. Rather than manually like for enabling AIGLX, we can do it by reconfiguring the xserver-xorg package

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

If you have ever seen the inside of the Xorg configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, you will probably notice the questions that accompany lines you often edit without knowing why.

The first part of the reconfiguration deals with which driver to use for the X server. This is important and fglrx must be selected.

Other options will include the the PCI bus it is located on, keyboard and mouse settings, monitor resolution and similar options. If the X Server has been working correctly before this reconfiguration, you can just leave these values alone, and accept them as they appear.

The process will exit and copy the old configuration file to a unique filename, based on the date and time, in case you need to go back.

Finally you need to restart the PC, to make sure that the fglrx module is loaded (restarting the X Server doesn’t cut it here), and then observe the changes.

liam@liam-desktop:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON X300/X550 Series Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6011 (8.28.

liam@liam-desktop:~$ fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
867 frames in 5.0 seconds = 173.400 FPS
1120 frames in 5.0 seconds = 224.000 FPS
1114 frames in 5.0 seconds = 222.800 FPS
1130 frames in 5.0 seconds = 226.000 FPS
1098 frames in 5.0 seconds = 219.600 FPS
liam@liam-desktop:~$

For some reason all my GTK fonts have become very small, but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be any real issues. So now onto XGL and Beryl again.