How to get Beryl working in Cassandra?

[zenobiaflex]

I have looked through the forum and most of the things I can find seem to be related to the older distros of Mint. I just started using Cassandra after flirting with PCLOS2007. While there were things I didn't like about PCLOS that made me switch to Mint, it seemed to have an easy-to-use Beryl.

I am not real clear on whether I need to also activate the Desktop Effects to get this working? It isn't clear but I have a feeling I am not supposed to activate that if I want to use Beryl. I found the posting about getting Beryl to be in the startup, but for some reason I can't get the desktop cube working or get the semi-transparent windows, etc.

I am not sure if I should click back to default or what needs to happen... it worked easily in PCLOS with my Gateway desktop, but now it doesn't seem to be doing what I want. I can get wobbly windows using desktop effects, though. Hmmmm... I didn't edit the xorg.conf file (as was listed in the wiki/forum) since I assume this is not needed with Cassandra as Beryl was included in the package.

Can someone walk me through this to at least get semi-transparent wobbly windows on a cube? I'd be happy with that at least... I hate to have to ask on the forum... but I guess I am still a newbie. Is there something I didn't check off? Perhaps I should take it out of the startup list before I check off whatever I am missing...since now I am worried it will hose my system if it suddenly engages after not seeing any progress!!

Thanks for any help...

[KrazyPenguin]

I have looked through the forum and most of the things I can find seem to be related to the older distros of Mint. I just started using Cassandra after flirting with PCLOS2007. While there were things I didn't like about PCLOS that made me switch to Mint, it seemed to have an easy-to-use Beryl.

I am not real clear on whether I need to also activate the Desktop Effects to get this working? It isn't clear but I have a feeling I am not supposed to activate that if I want to use Beryl. I found the posting about getting Beryl to be in the startup, but for some reason I can't get the desktop cube working or get the semi-transparent windows, etc.

I am not sure if I should click back to default or what needs to happen... it worked easily in PCLOS with my Gateway desktop, but now it doesn't seem to be doing what I want. I can get wobbly windows using desktop effects, though. Hmmmm... I didn't edit the xorg.conf file (as was listed in the wiki/forum) since I assume this is not needed with Cassandra as Beryl was included in the package.

Can someone walk me through this to at least get semi-transparent wobbly windows on a cube? I'd be happy with that at least... I hate to have to ask on the forum... but I guess I am still a newbie. Is there something I didn't check off? Perhaps I should take it out of the startup list before I check off whatever I am missing...since now I am worried it will hose my system if it suddenly engages after not seeing any progress!!

Thanks for any help...

Assuming your graphics card is setup properly you go MintMenu (lower-left corner) -> Applications -> System Tools -> Beryl Manager

At this point the little red diamond appears in the task bar.
You might have to right-click on Beryl and select "Select Window Manager" and change it from Metacity to Beryl and that is it.

Let us know how it goes

Edited: You don't have to add desktop effects.
Beryl is installed by default in Mint

[Husse]

Oho - KrazyPenguin is right but first you have to install the 3D drivers, or you may get problems....
Envy (-t or -g) will do it for nvidia and ATI

[Lolo Uila]

No! Do NOT install the ATI proprietary driver. It does not work with Beryl (well, not without o whole lot of extra headache). The Nvidia driver is fine, but if you have ATI you should be using the open-source driver.

If you could give us some info on what hardware you are running it would help us trouble-shoot your issues.

[Husse]

Lolo Uila which driver does envy install? Haven't used ATI for at least 5 years...
But to start envy without 3d driver gets you into some real problems....

[Lolo Uila]

Depends on what card you have. For most recent ATI cards Envy installs the proprietary ATI (closed-source) driver.

By default the ATI closed source driver does not support composite extensions and doesn't work with Beryl or Compiz. You can get it to work if you run your desktop in an XGL session. To do that involves installing XGL and downgrading Beryl to an older version. I have that running on my test system because the open source driver is very unstable with the 9700 Pro that's in that system. It works pretty well, once you get past the getting-it-to-work hassles. I still haven't managed to get the Emerald themes working, though.

In my primary system I'm running an ATI X800 XT PE and it works great with the open-source driver and Beryl/Emerald. I've got it running on dual monitors now, with dual desktop cubes. It's pretty cool.

Click here for picture...

Aloha, Tim

[zenobiaflex]

Well-

I deselected Beryl from Startup (in case it went nuts) then selected it as the desktop manager. Seems to be working fine, so I set it to go at startup again.

In Hardware Information it tells me I am using:

Device: 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller

I don't know that I even have a built-in 3D to be honest...I got this refurb Gateway from Tiger Direct and didn't add a 3D card to it beyond what may already be running inside (don't play games so I didn't care at the time).

Hopefully this is stable!

Thanks for the help so far...

[Lolo Uila]

I have run Beryl on a Sony notebook with an Intel graphics controller and it seemed to work well. The Intel chip has some 3D acceleration. It's not as fast as recent ATI or Nvidia chips, but it should be fine for Beryl.