This is a tutorial to get Beryl working on a normal install of the version of Xandros that comes with the Eee. Beryl is an OpenGL accelerated desktop that seeks to provide a free, open source desktop experience to the community that reflects the wishes of the users. Above all else, the project seeks to listen to and respond to the requests of the user base.(http://www.beryl-project.org/)
Please feel free to add/delete any information that may be relevent to Beryl itself, or to any of the subsections of the article.
This wiki article is based on the discussions found here, feel free to discuss topic involving beryl installation there.
To begin we have to add the Beryl repositories to apt's sources.list file so that you have a spot to download the packages from. To do this you can open up Console (or any other terminal of your choice). First type in sudo bash. This verifys you as a super user inside that terminal and assures that everything we do will have full permissions as root.
The next step is to open the /etc/apt/sources.list file to edit it. To do this, type in the terminal you have type:
sudo kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list (You can use nano to edit the file as well)
You will be presented with a file that looks like this:
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 main deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main
What we want to do is add 2 lines for the Beryl repositories. So after the two lines already in the sources.list, add in these lines:
#Beryl Repositories deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main deb http://debian.beryl-project.org/ etch main
When this is done, save the file and head back to your terminal window.
After saving the file you need to add a key to allow you to download from the repo. Do this by typing the following into the terminal:
wget -O - http://debian.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
After this completes, you want to type sudo apt-get update to download the updated package headers required to download the Beryl packages. After the update has completed you want to type:
sudo apt-get install beryl beryl-core beryl-manager beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data beryl-settings beryl-settings-bindings emerald-themes
Do not exit the terminal yet, this should install all of the packages you need to get Beryl and Emerald running, but we still have another configuration file to change to beef up the capabilities of the X server.
To run Beryl it is required to change some settings for the xorg configuration file. In the terminal type sudo kwrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The first section of editing is done in the ServerFlags section(Line 24 if you're lost). The line Option “AIGLX” “false” should be changed to true.
Next you need to look for the section called Device(line 76 if you're lost). The Driver option will say intel but we need to change it to i810.
The last section is at the very bottom, Extensions. You will see the line:
Option “Composite” “Disable”
This line should be changed to say Enable.
Note: Forum user devondan has let us know that it is Enable with no 'd' on the end. Putting a 'd' may or may not render you a white screen error. YMMV.
After this you should be done, move on to running Beryl.
Important for French and German eee PC, make sure that the “depth” is set to 24, in screen section. Or just follow the guide on the http://wiki.eeeuser.com/german_eeepc#get_higher_resolutions_on_vga-out_to_work Otherwise you will get a messy green screen.
You can run Beryl one of two ways. First, you can go to the menu, applications, system and you will see Beryl Manager. This will attempt to start Beryl. You will know that it has started by the red diamond appearing in the bottom right tray on the taskbar. (See below for troubleshooting and problems) The second way to run it is to open a terminal and type beryl-manager. This will give you the exact same diamond in the bottom right of the tray.(An easy way to check if it is working for sure is to hold ctrl+alt then click on the desktop and move your mouse around, if the spinning cube appears then it is atleast running.)
Now, it may run smooth the first time, it may not. Keep in mind that the Asus version of Xandros is very customized to run on the hardware it does, and even though Beryl was designed to run on virtually any hardware, the software configuration may not be perfect. The easiest way to recover from almost all errors while using Beryl, or anything else for that matter is to press control+alt+backspace. This will restart the X server and return you to your default session. (Note: This will not work if you get the white screen that a lot have gotten from starting Beryl for the first time, see troubleshooting below for info on that.)
To get optimal performance from Beryl, you will have to change some of the advanced beryl options. You should do this before setting Beryl to Autostart. To start, right click on the diamond beryl-manager icon. A menu will pop up, open the sub menu called Advanced Beryl options. In here you can tell beryl manager what settings to use. Through experimentation Maddocks found these settings worked the best without making additional configuration changes to Xandros.
Set “Rendering path” to “Copy”
Set “Composite Overlay Window” to “Use COW”
Set “Rendering platform” to “Force AIGLX”
Set “Binding” to “Automatic”
Set “Rendering” to “Indirect rendering”
Next we will make some changes to the theme to make beryl look acceptable. Right click the beryl icon and select “Emerald Theme Manager”. The “Themes Setting” tab will be open by default, but we will have to go down a few more levels to get to the settings we want. So go to Themes Setting→Edit Theme→Frame/Shadows tab.
When done you can save the theme as whatever you like, however you cannot completely replace System Themes.
With these setting you should be able to get reasonable, if not ideal, performance from beryl.
Use this option with care. There are a lot of people who have Beryl running well, then there are others with problems that need solving. For those with problems, they do not want Beryl trying to start every time they boot the machine up, it makes it pretty well useless. So please do be careful using this option. I suggest playing with Beryl manually before making it autostart in case of any errors.
Anyways, if you have tested beryl and tweaked emerald to your liking and want it to autostart then open a terminal and type sudo kwrite ~/.kde/Autostart/beryl-manager.desktop.
You need to paste these contents into it:
[Desktop Entry]
Exec=beryl-manager
Name=Beryl
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=0
Type=Application
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
These optimizations are based on a compiz AIGLX how to. They are not necessary, but do seem to help the performance of beryl. This section is a work in progress, and therefore may not be suitable for novice users to follow. The author of this particular wiki section does not understand what the changes are really doing and consequently novice users should be cautious in attempting these optimizations. Any commentary on how these tweaks work would be appreciated and any unnecessary tweaks should be removed from the wiki.
In the “Module” section, insert the following text as the first line.
Load "dbe"
In the “Device” section, insert the following text as the last line.
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
In the “ServerLayout” section, insert the following text
Option "AIGLX" "true"
Through experimentation these settings seem to work the best for advanced beryl options after following the steps in this section. The settings are not as crucial as they are without applying the advanced optimizations and should therefore only be used as a guideline.
Set “Rendering path” to “Copy”
Set “Composite Overlay Window” to “Use COW”
Set “Rendering platform” to “Force AIGLX”
Set “Binding” to “XGL Binding”
Set “Rendering” to “XGL Rendering”
After executing these steps, beryl should run smoothly at stock speed for all but the most demanding AIGLX effects (such as fire).
Okay so you've got huge problems with Beryl, or you don't want it taking up space, or you want to hopefully reconfigure everything with a reinstall. There are a few ways to go about uninstalling the packages. The GUI version is Synaptic, which you can get to by opening a terminal and typing synaptic. This will bring up the GUI where you can click search and search for beryl, to find and mark for uninstallation. The command line way, which will probably prove easier, is to open a terminal and type sudo apt-get remove beryl*
The star after beryl will force apt to search for any packages which are associated with it, and remove them. Now, this will simply remove the packages, to purge the configuration files you need to feed apt another command while also uninstalling. To purge the config files and uninstall type: sudo apt-get --purge remove beryl*
