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.

Compiz is a compositing window manager that uses 3D graphics acceleration via OpenGL. It provides various new graphical effects and features on any desktop environment, including Gnome and KDE. Compiz Fusion is a collection of plugins and a configuration system for the Compiz compositing window manager. It was created from the remerging of Beryl into Compiz.

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).

A misconception among most Windows and Mac users is that an Operating System and a desktop environment are the same. Linux users have the opportunity to know better. Linux users have the advantage of using several desktop environments/windowmanagers like Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, XFCE and Openbox to name only a few.

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the Compiz community plugin set “Compiz Extras” and the window manager core independent parts of the “Beryl” project. Both Compiz Extras and Beryl have left important marks on in how we look at Window management, and with the merge, you no longer have to choose which one to use.

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.

Compiz Fusion is the best thing that happened to Linux desktop user experience yet. In the world of Linux bashers who argue that Linux is not quite ready for home users; compiz is one of the few things that really set Linux apart from other OS with major market share.

What have you heard about Linux? An operating system which is hard to learn with a shell for typing complex commands?