While TV-commercials are in awe about Windows Vista, 3D-Desktops have been around in Linux for quite a while. But just together with the launch of Vista, they became easy to install. So, if you want to save some money for new hardware, this is how I installed a “Wow-class 3D Beryl Desktop” on my P4 laptop…and that is over three years old by now!

As of Ubuntu Version 7.04 “Feisty Fawn”, installing Beryl has gotten even easier: Install the NVidia driver via the “Restricted Drivers Assistant” and install “beryl” and “beryl-manager” using apt-get, synaptic, aptitude or whatever package manager you prefer. Tell Gnome to start beryl-manager every time it loads (via “System → Settings → Session”) and you are all set for a cool 3D-Desktop!

I mainly followed the steps on UbuntuForums.org, which made installing the NVidia driver and Beryl really easy.

It boiled down to adding two package sources to APT's sources.list:

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main
deb http://nvidia.limitless.lupine.me.uk/ubuntu edgy stable

Then adding the key's to APT's keyring, so the sources are considered trustworthy:

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

This is followed by a round of

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
sudo apt-get upgrade

and

sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals
sudo apt-get install beryl emerald-themes

Beryl is now ready to go. Simply launch “beryl-manager” using the shell, Alt-F2 or the Application Menu (under “System”). You can swich from Beryl to your regular window-manager by clicking on the red gem in the system-tray.

First, I did not have any window-decorations painted when running Beryl. This was solved by setting the color-depth to 32 Bits and adding the line

 
   Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

to the “Device” section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Second, I had the problem that new windows would have a blacked-out client area. This was solved by setting the reder-platform to “AIGLX” in the Beryl-Manager menu.

While I realy enjoy my 3D-Desktop, there are some applications that are getting too slow to enjoy. One of them is Second Life, but I guess there are others.

The Beryl-Manager menu provides a means to swich window-managers. So when i do regular work, I use Beryl, and if I need 3D-Performance inside the application I switch to Gnome's Metacity. I can even do it on the fly!

Now, this is what makes me say “Wow!”