I've become so used to wobbly windows now that whenever I use a regular machine I end up feeling cheated if I drag one and it doesn't display a certain sticky inertia. And if I feel positively deflated if I hit Ctrl + Alt + [any arrow key] and a glorious desktop cube doesn't flip me over to the next display face.

What am I talking about? Beryl! It's a fork of the Compiz project -- which I first looked at here, and although it's only at version 0.2 I've found it remarkably solid and reliable.



This is the sort of thing I'm talking about...



...and this. (Click the images for a detailed view.)


You don't the latest PC with a multi-gigahertz engine and truckloads of RAM to run Beryl. In fact it runs surprisingly well on quite old kit. Here's the specs of the machine I used to test the configuration procedure outlined below...

• AMD Athlon 800MHz CPU
• 500MB RAM
• NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (128MB) video card

To start, I added a pristine copy of Kubuntu 7.04 to the machine's existing OS, partitioned as follows;

• 10GB /root partition
• 30GB /home partition
• 500MB /swap partition

(If you don't have that much room on your hard disk you might be interested to note that after installation I'd used 22% of the space I'd allotted to /root and just 2% of the /home space.)


Setting up the Video Card
The official NVidia video drivers require a license agreement so aren't included in Kubuntu by default.They are however available via Automatix - and I've found that's the easiest way to install them.

To add Automatix, visit www.getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation. Ubuntu and Debian users can follow the Easy Direct Installation method. Kubuntu users have to be a little more hands on, cutting an pasting six whole lines into a terminal session.

After you've done that -- and had a little lie down to recover -- kick off Automatix via K Menu > System > Automatix. Choose Drivers and install.

To activate the new driver you need to restart the X (graphics) server. You can do this the brutal way by hitting Ctrl + Alt + Backspace or by sedately logging out of this session and doing an Alt + E from the login window.


Installing Beryl

1. Start Adept Manager (K-Menu > System > Adept Manager).
2. Enter beryl in the Search windown and select the following packages;

• beryl
• beryl-manager
• emerald-themes

3. Click Apply Changes and close Adept Manager when installation's complete.

Running Beryl for the First Time

1. Open a console window (K-Menu > System > Konsole).
2. Type beryl-manager and hit <Enter>. This will start Beryl, put the application's red diamond icon into the Taskbar and display any configuration problems in the console window. In my case I got...

The Fun Stuff
Beryl-Manager is the entry point for lots of goodies. Right-click and choose the Emerald Theme Manager to select from dozens of window surrounds, and Beryl Settings Manager to enable and configure more fancy graphics features than you can shake a stick at. I'll let you do the exploring, but here's just a handful of shortcut keys to get you started.

Alt + Tab + any arrow key	Rotate the 3D cube.
Alt + Tab + drag the left mouse button	Free-form control of the 3D cube.
Alt + Tab	Window switcher (between windows on this cube face).
Alt + Ctrl + Tab	Window switcher (between all windows on the cube).
Alt + Mouse scroll wheel	Preview all windows on this face.
Alt + Mouse scroll wheel	Change windows opacity.

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