Submitted by “Desktop computing technology has evolved considerably since the first graphical user interface was developed by researchers at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in 1973. Microsoft’s Aero Glass, Apple’s Quartz 2D Extreme, and Sun’s Project Looking Glass are all poised to transform the way that users interact with computers. Also at the forefront of innovation, the Linux community has some prodigiously impressive new user interface technologies of its own. Beryl, a new open-source window manager for Linux, features compelling visual enhancements like support for transparent windows and elaborate window animations.”
I haven’t to waste some time to comment this, someone on the arstechnica forum already did
And OK, so you can make your windows animate away however you want. Whoopy-de-doo. Yeah, I really want my windows to disappear in a very intensive flame effect, or explode to pieces. This looks like effects found in bad home-movie editing software (ever seen something a kid created in Microsoft Movie Maker? heh).
I haven’t to waste some time to comment this, someone on the arstechnica forum already did
And OK, so you can make your windows animate away however you want. Whoopy-de-doo. Yeah, I really want my windows to disappear in a very intensive flame effect, or explode to pieces. This looks like effects found in bad home-movie editing software (ever seen something a kid created in Microsoft Movie Maker? heh).
If thats all you can come up with then I don’t think you’ve really spent any decent time using Beryl.
Those effects can be turned off and there are some nice usability aspects to the software such as the ‘expose’ style window selection.
This project is good for the open source desktop regardless of wether you use it or not. It gives provides a set of features that are available in all of the competitors and not having this around would cause a deluge of complaints from Windows and Mac fanboys that would be far more annoying than people talking about how they like some eye candy that you don’t care for.
You don’t have to install it (I don’t have it installed) and you are free to ignore it but be glad that it exists.
“This project is good for the open source desktop regardless of wether you use it or not. It gives provides a set of features that are available in all of the competitors and not having this around would cause a deluge of complaints from Windows and Mac fanboys that would be far more annoying than people talking about how they like some eye candy that you don’t care for.”
Home users who want to buy a PC (or an OS) are usually looking at how it looks like: window manager, effects, desktop, icons, menues etc. So Beryl could be promoting Linux OSes in a very good way. The visual experience is the first one and the most impressive one. Especially live system CDs featuring Beryl along with Linux offer something you won’t find in “Windows”: You don’t need to install anything, you can test and try out. And if you think, well, KDE is fine as it is, I don’t like Beryl at all, so don’t install it. But at least Beryl is very impressive as long as you have the hardware specification it needs.
“You don’t have to install it (I don’t have it installed) and you are free to ignore it but be glad that it exists.”
I’d say the same.
Why is it that we have to read this sort of comments about users of other OSs all the time?
Is it really soooo incomprehensible to so many people that not every one uses the same OS and that there might be reasons for using Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD – you name it – without having to refer to people as zealots, fanboys and the likes that indicate people with no will of their own??
To be honest, it annoys me…
“Why is it that we have to read this sort of comments about users of other OSs all the time? ”
It’s like guys who need to constantly assert their machismo; they are simply not secure in their choice.
Really sets a new low there, copy a lame stupid troll from someone else and then not even giving the ass credit.
Looks just like the vistas
(no, really, it’s a compliment)
I think the name needs changing… Beryl’s not so good. Maybe Ethel, Doris, or Edna would be a better choice.
I think complaints about the name sounding like an old lady are limited mainly to the UK. Over in the US, (and anywhere non english speaking I’d wager) Beryl isn’t really seen as a grandma name.
Anyway, would you complain if it was named Pearl or Ruby – also names of precious materials that happen to be stereotypical grandma names?
Obviously you don’t feel this way, but when I see such names attached to a software project *especially one about bling, and one with an icon that looks like a gemstone* I think first of the gem, and the “grandma name” only comes to mind when you complain about it.
So, is it worth changing a name because people in one country (maybe some other commonwealth countries as well I suppose) associate it with old ladies instead of a gemstone?
Compared to Aero
Beryl just runs amazing well in my 2 years old non-Aero class laptop computer: Pentium M with Intel-915G 1 GB Ram under FC6.
I’ll do you one better…
It runs fine in a live environment on my 5 year old AMD 1.3GHz Thunderbird with 256MB RAM with a GeForce II Ultra graphics card (also 5 years old)
If that doesn’t say that Vista is a bloated POS I don’t know what does.
Edited 2007-03-19 20:59
Yet I failed to make it run it at even remotely usable speeds on an n6200 chipped 128 mb turbocache pcix card. Yes, I know about the glx problems with turbocache cards, but this knowledge doesn’t make it work :/
“It runs fine in a live environment on my 5 year old AMD 1.3GHz Thunderbird with 256MB RAM with a GeForce II Ultra graphics card (also 5 years old)”
We all know how fast technology evolves in the IT world, but ‘old’ is still a relative term. People don’t have a clue how fast an AMD (or Intel) 1.3GHz CPU really is, what an incredible amount of ‘shit’ it eats trough each second. And some call that slow…
Heck, I programmed a real-time software oscilloscope once on a MSX2 computer. That is: read audio samples, calculate location in video memory, talk to videochip to set single pixels on the screen. Several thousand times a second. That was on a 8-bit, 3.58 MegaHz CPU, using just KiloBytes for code and data.
An AMD 1.3GHz CPU is thousands of times faster, and 256MB of RAM… remember that’s really just for code, and variables. For background storage there’s harddisks.
If *any* user interface doesn’t run silky smooth on such a setup, then that software is crap, not the machine.
These days, it seems a dualcore multi-GHz CPU and GB’s of RAM is nothing… Bah, I read: the art of programming has somehow been lost along the way….
Just needed to get that out of my system, news at 11
I prefer and use Beryl over Compiz. I consider Beryl easier to install and tweak. Still am I the only one who feels Compiz and the achievments of Dave R. are being understated by the one line mention in the article?
I am not sure it is reasonable but I still feel that Compiz is getting a bit of the shaft in general from a PR perspective. I guess it is that Beryl seems to be more approachable and easy to play with, but Compiz never seems to get the spotlight.
Edited 2007-03-19 22:51
One of our IT Managers had just seen Beryl running and he was really raving over it. At home he uses Win as his main system but keeps an RH box to play with as he is responsible for an RHEL server. But by and large he is a Windows man.
When XP came out he was full of enthusiasm for it. He seemed genuinely sad when I told him that I planned never to install it on my home system.
Now not a peep about Vista, just talk of about how cool the Linux desktop has become. I guess it’s a sign of the times.
Edited 2007-03-19 23:12
Beryl definitely has more features and potential than Vista, mainly because Vista really only has two configurataion options: On or Off. Problem with Beryl though is it’s still pretty buggy.
Initially Beryl gave me no title bars, and I didn’t have to try very hard to get X to refuse to start, or to just display an all white screen.
It needs to detect your config better, and give you more meaningful descriptions of the various config options you have. This will stop everyone just trying each option until they hit the one that works.
OS installed on YOUR computer : Your choice
Use of accelerated 3D desktop : Your choice
Feeding the “Troll”? : Your choice
I have been using linux for years, fired MS 3 years ago. Using Beryl, and very satisfied. I felt the article was
unbiased / impartial and informative. No sales pitch noted at this end.
Thanks & Cheers
Sorry to ‘rain on the parade’ but give me stable and reliable desktop over having windows zooming around and being amused like a low IQ pleb being amused by ‘flashy lights’ and ‘ooh sparkle’!
Ultimately, when things are being developed, the first thing that should be asked, “does this improve productivity” and one thing I can assure you that a stable, reliable, almost crash proof desktop vs. having something that has a fancy ‘flame effect’.
Well, the use of OpenGL on the desktop wich we are seeing now is just an early echo of what has already existed. But from now on, there are a multitude of potential possibilities of concepts wich could emerge from that. First and foremost are the fancy effects, but this could really take off until we’re using desktop computers in whole other ways. How I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s gonna be a development here, and that it’s gonna bring it beyond the ordinary desktop metaphor.
Take a look at these, for example:
http://insitu.lri.fr/metisse/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ
but when i try vncviewer to another box i cannot enter the password when beryl is enabled,
anyone know why ?
Performance was awful on my PC but I’ve no idea why. My specs are:
AMD64
1Gb
NEO2
GeForce 6600GTS
As an example, scrolling a web page containing pure text was like running any modern operating system on an 8086. I trawled through the setting and turned off those that I thought might hurt performance. I also read the documentation to look for other settings that might slow things down. But it was simply unusable and I had to uninstall it. I don’t know if this is common or specific to certain graphics cards. Should I have been using a specific NVIDIA driver?
I was disappointed – I installed it expecting something resembling (however remotely) the smooth system used in OSX. What I got was the equivalent to X running in 64k of memory.
To be honest, I’d prefer someone produce a home desktop alternative to X that was designed to support the features in Compiz/Beryl. I’m not saying I know anything about X’s performance, but surely a lighter system (more like OSX’ Quartz) would be effort better spent? IMO
Edited 2007-03-20 12:36