Archive for the ‘Ubuntu’ Category

Upgrade to Hardy Heron

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

If you’re like me using Ubuntu as your primary operating system you probably wait for a little bit before upgrading to a new version. I finally made the upgrade to Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) on my Lenovo T60. I have a few things to be very happy about:

  • I was able to purge the binary-only ATI driver (fglrx) from my system. The open-source version (radeon) seems to work just fine with my Mobility x1400 graphics card and my 1680×1050 laptop LCD. I don’t get direct rendering, hence no cool desktop effects and no games but guess what? I can live with these limitations just fine. Instead I get much better dual-head support through xrandr, simple hassle-free installation, and a configuration that’s fully supported under Ubuntu.
  • Suspend and hibernate work!!! This might be another good side effect from dropping the fglrx driver.
  • Software version upgrades – skype 2 (hello video!), firefox 3, kde 3.5

Be sure to check here (important note about an upgrade freeze with 2.6.22-15):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades

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3D Desktop Effects with the Beryl Manager on Ubuntu

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

I’ve known about Beryl for some time but have been skeptical about installing it. 3D effects and other desktop eye candy is cool but it doesn’t trump productivity and stability.

It turned out I was wrong on both of these points. I finally made the move to Beryl and was surprised by the results, which are quite good. Most importantly I’ve since found lots of productivity-related features in Beryl that go beyond “eye candy”. Here is a short list:

  1. Rotating among several desktop workspaces is plain cool but it is also very encouraging towards actually utilizing multiple desktop workspaces.
  2. The animation effects on minimizing and closing windows are not to be estimated as a continuous source of geek-type inspiration.
  3. Hitting F9 displays all active windows in the current workspace at the same time (like tiles) so you can pick the one you want. Hitting F8 does the same for active windows in all workspaces. Great stuff! When many windows are opened I hate cycling through!
  4. Using the “Windows” (Super) key in combination with “h” toggles maximizing the window horizontally. I love this one: a life saver for wide-screen laptop users. Doing the same in combination with “v” toggles maximizing the window vertically.
  5. Alt+F8 initiates resizing a window.

There are many other features I haven’t yet come to but I already feel much better about using a great desktop environment.

I am running a T60 Thinkpad with an ATI card (Radeon x1400). I use the proprietary fglrx driver because the free Radeon driver doesn’t support my card well. Given this my path to Beryl required using Xgl to get the 3D effects. You can find instructions by searching for “Beryl Xgl fglrx” or use this link.

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