3D

I have wrote a long time ago about Looking Glass a Sun/Java 3D Desktop for Linux, yesterday I installed on my Debian Etch, using now my latest ATI drivers.

Installing it on a Debian Linux box is really easy, lets see how to do it.

This is my first time with Mandriva, I got the Mandriva DVD and bought a new Hard Disk to test it, I installed it on a PC with this characteristics.

Microprocessor

Intel Pentium 4, 3 GHz, 1 MB Cache

RAM

1024 MBytes

Video Card

ATI Radeon X300 128 Mbytes RAM

Sound

Intel AC97 embedded on the Mother Board

Each day 3D effects on Linux become more and more popular, Compiz came first, later Beryl, now we have compiz and beryl together but we also a new player here, it comes from SUN and its name is Looking Glass, it has really great effects, its creator is: Hideya Kawahara.

Update: How to install Looking glass on Debian Etch

The system requirements to run this on your PC are:

Micro Processor: 1.4 GHz or bigger
Graphics card: 3D accelerated with at least 128 Mbytes RAM, better an ATI or NVIDIA with 256 MB
Memory: At least 512 MB
Linux: Enabled with OpenGL support (1.2 or greater)

I have installed beryl in my Feisty and also in my Fedora 6 following the same steps followed to have it installed on Feisty.

Looking at it work we all could see it is really nice, and if we have a regular video card, not a minimal negative effect is seen in overall performance.

But I started to think what is the real impact of this project in Linux, beside being nice it gives no other functionality, but wait, then I realized I was wrong the composite projects like Compiz and Beryl now together are really important for Linux.

Where?

I found how easy is to install Beryl and emerald on Feisty, I have this Feisty Fawn which started as Dapper, then upgraded to Edgy and now Upgraded to Feisty Fawn, I have never installed Beryl nor Compiz on this PC, an Intel Celeron with Intel Video Card embedded on the mother board.

OSWeekly wrote a nice article about Beryl, lots of the things they say about it are true, Beryl is beta, and if you a have a machine you really need to work, maybe it is not a good idea to install Beryl on it, also Beryl needs more hardware resource and can make your PC runs slower, I have a Petium Celeron with an INTEL integraded on the mother board video card, and this system runs both Fedora Core 6 (FC6) and Ubuntu Feisty, on both of them in installed beryl (as easy as yum install beryl-gnome or apt-get install beryl-gnome) of course turning on the appropiate reposotories in both

Ok, I have not tested this yet, as soon as I did I will update this posts, so please if you try it and have good results (or bad) post it on comments.

According to the Compiz site the Merge of Compiz and Beryl is
official, but nothing about this is said in the Beryl site.

Still not official, but it seems that Compiz and Beryl may merge, according to LinuxTechDaily.

That could be really good news, as while they are separated they are wasting capacities,