Xgl with GNOME, under Ubuntu Dapper Drake

OMG!! Xgl is so pretty!!

First things first, I have to say how I’ve made it run. I say in a previous post (that I actually wrote some minutes ago), that I have given a try to Ubuntu, to test how good that Xgl thing is. And man is it good!

Xgl is a graphics server, something that interprets data and displays it on the screen (as XFree86 and X.org). It basically allows for 2D effects of a Desktop Environment to be rendered with the powerfull engine of the Graphical Card, which untill now only accelerated the 3D effects, as e.g. games. However, one needs a window manager that takes advantage of these capabilities to create effects. The first such a wm was Compiz. Sadly, I was not able to install it, but I did install Beryl, which is a fork of Compiz.

I mostly followed the instructions in Fred.cpp’s blog[es].

It basically boils down to:

As root, or with the infamous sudo:


aptitude remove compiz compiz-gnome cgwd cgwd-themes xserver-xgl csm


Add to /etc/apt/sources.list (the last line only if you have a 64-bit CPU):


deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/ dapper main
deb http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main
deb-src http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main
deb http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main main-amd64


Get the GPG keys for the repositories:


wget http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -


Then:


aptitude update && aptitude upgrade


Install Xgl, Beryl and Emerald (the theme manager for Beryl):


aptitude install xserver-xgl libgl1-mesa xserver-xorg libglitz-glx1 beryl beryl-core beryl-manager beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data beryl-settings emerald emerald-themes


Now everything is installed, we need to create 2 files:

/usr/local/bin/startxgl, our startx replacement. Its contents:

Xgl -fullscreen :1 -ac -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer & sleep 2 && DISPLAY=:1
# Start GNOME
exec gnome-session


/usr/share/xsessions/gnome-xgl.desktop, a new entry for the GDM session menu. Its contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=gnome-xgl
Exec=/usr/local/bin/startxgl
Icon=
Type=Application


Then chmod +x them both.

We then need to enter GNOME as a regular user (if we are not already in it), and go to System/Preferences/Sessions/Autostart programs, and add beryl-manager to them. In the next GDM login, we will have an gnome-xgl option for a session. Choose it, and there you are.

Second, the screenshots (click to enlarge):

A window being minimized, fading away.

Two windows being shown as with MacOS exposè.

Two semitransparent windows. You can see my blog through a terminal :^)

A video, being played at the edge of a cube (the faces of which represent different desktops).

A video being played semitransparent. We can see an icon below it!

The video in the corner, plus it is raining all around!