« September 2006 | Main | March 2007 »
October 20, 2006
Ubuntu Edgy Eft
It's been ages since I last posted, and in that time I've been playing with Ubuntu Edgy Eft on my desktop PC at home. It's an Asus Pundit R - a really small "book sized" case with a custom motherboard that just fits! I've had it a year now and the most frustrating thing about it has always been the graphics. It's got an ATi 9100 IGP chipset which may work passably in windows but is very definitely 2D only in linux, neither the ATi binary drivers and open source drivers support 3D acceleration. Terribly frustrating if you want to do anything other than web-surfing and office use.
After a few hacks to quieten the box down with new fans, I bought a 3d Fuzion Geforce 6200 PCI - since the Pundit R has no AGP or PCI-express slots, it's probably the fastest PCI card I could cram in. It plays surprisingly cleanly with the ATi chipset, though auto-detection of graphics cards is sketchy, I have to input the details myself.
Having got that in the box I installed the latest beta of Ubuntu's next release, 6.10, codenamed Edgy Eft (on account of it's cutting-edge and possibly less stable nature, as compared with 6.06 LTS, the Dapper Drake.) Following instructions on Ubuntu Forums, I installed the beta nvidia drivers and the Beryl compositing window manager. If you've not seen videos of the effects that Beryl or Compiz allow, you really should check out some videos (for example on youtube)
It allows the desktop and any running programs to be acted on by 3D effects, real time. It takes four "virtual desktops" and makes them four faces of a cube, which you can spin around to access programs running on the other screens. It gives new minimize, maximize, close animations. When a window is moved it jiggles about like it was made of jelly. Beyond this, more effects are being actively worked on, so more exciting things are yet to come.
For the first time in months I feel excited by the new things I can do on my PC (even when it breaks!) I've taken it in to show pupils and other teachers at school and some of them like it enough to look at linux and have a go themselves!
Technorati tags: ubuntu, edgy eft, linux, beryl, aiglx, compiz
Posted by hounddog32 at 04:38 PM
| Comments (0)
| TrackBack (0)