This tutorial shows how you can install and use Beryl on a CentOS 5.0 desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card). With Beryl, you can make your desktop use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube.

This tutorial shows how you can enable Beryl on a PCLinuxOS 2007 desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card). With Beryl you can make your desktop use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube.

This tutorial shows how you can use Compiz, Beryl, and Metisse on a Mandriva 2007 Spring (Mandriva 2007.1) desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card). With Compiz, Beryl, and Metisse, you can make your desktop use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube (although the desktop cube isn't available on Metisse).

Among the items [Quinn Storm and David Reveman] are planning next for the Compiz/Beryl project are new interfaces for applications, retained rendering interfaces, incrementally replace X11, standard API, and collaboration important. No new name has yet been decided for the merged Compiz and Beryl merge, but the merger should be completed within the next few months.

In the 10 years I've been using Linux, I've run the gamut of window managers and desktop environments: FvWM, FvWM95, ICEWM, AfterStep, BlackBox, KDE, GNOME, Beryl, Fluxbox, CDE, XFCE, Windowmaker, Sawfish, Metacity, WM2, as well as Compiz. But it seems that no matter how many times I try another Linux GUI, I always go back to Enlightenment.

Peter told you how to quickly set desktop effects in KDE with the press of a button if you’re using KWin. A similar trick is available for GNOME’s Metacity.

I’ve been a fan of Beryl for some time - using in on my Ubuntu, Debian Etch and Slackware distro machines. (see my article Desktop Time Wasters for images of my original Debian box with beryl.) I’ve always done this with source compiles on Slackware, and packages on Ubuntu and Debian.

Beryl v. Vista aero, with a video. Beryl is looking slick.

Now Compiz, Beryl is all over the place and there are massive discussions about it. But I have a few doubts about it. First of all, how do we benchmark an interface, especially its efficiency. I would like to propose a few speculations that could hopefully evolve into some sort of quantifying standards of a desktop interface.