Testing compiz-fusion on debian

My system:
debian lenny

Installation:
apt-get install compiz-fusion-kde
apt-get install compiz-fusion-gnome

Optional packages:
apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported
apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
apt-get install compiz-fusion-icon

Above commands install kde and gnome-specific compiz-fusion backends and all other packages will be automatically installed depending on dependencies. To start compiz-fusion for KDE, go to System -> Compiz Fusion Icon.

Repo:
Put this in /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/shames/debian-etch/desktopfx/stable/ ./

Some screenshots:

Compiz Fusion - the merge of Compiz and Beryl

What is Compiz Fusion?

Compiz Fusion is an extension of the Compiz compositing window manager for the X Window System. It was created from the remerging of Beryl into Compiz. It aims to port almost all of the features of Beryl to Compiz plugins, and continue to improve Compiz's core functionality.

Some screenshots (taken from my desktop):

Installation

This package is not officially included in main repository of Fedora. It is even conflicts with the official compiz package. For Fedora users, you can install it through yum with kageshensi's repo. Instructions are in there. Ubuntu users may want to check Ubuntu Forum for more info. Click here for a start.

On a quest to get a 3D desktop part 2

You might still wondering whether i am still on a quest to get a 3D desktop? Not really. After reading an article of Fedora Core 6 in LinuxFormat magazine, I thought I need to give it a try. Firstly, I tried it on a laptop with built-in graphic card Intel 915. It ran smoothly. 3D effects for compiz and beryl worked out of the box. I just had to activate it.

After too much coin tossing and coffee, I decided to give FC6 a try on my office's PC. After backing up all important files, I inserted the DVD and rebooted into the nice Fedora installer a.k.a anaconda. I decided to repartition my drive to give larger part for my / partition and created 3 more partitions for /home,/boot and of course a /swap. As a rule of thumb, /swap size is 2 times RAM size.

GNOME is some sort of 'official' window manager for Fedora and RedHat. That's why after booting into X, GNOME was loading. To get 3D effects, click on System -> Preferences -> Desktop Effects. This was compiz actually loading replacing metacity. Future release of GNOME and KDE will support 3D effects on the fly. As for time being, compiz or Beryl compositing window manager provides the effects. Beryl provides much more effects as anyone could imagine. Experiment it and you will be amazed what it can do. The 3D cube is superb!.

Now the quest has ended. The 3D desktop is mine!. Try it.

Some tips for beryl :
F9 or place mouse cursor at the topleft corner - tiled windows in a viewport
Ctrl+Alt+LeftArrow - spin cube to the left
Ctrl+Alt+RightArrow - Spin cube to the right
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+RightArrow/LeftArrow - Spin cube to the right or left with active window follows.
place mouse cursor at the bottomright corner - centers active window.

On a quest to get a 3D desktop

I'm very excited with 3D desktop after watching AIGLX and XGL in action with beryl or compiz window manager. I haven't been able to get it run on my computer with my video card since it is not supported composite extension and DRI simultaneously. The ATI's proprietary driver (fglrx) I use, doesn't support dri and composite extension simultaneously. I downloaded kororaa live CD to try it out and I was amazed.

At one point, I downloaded xorg, compiz and Mesa from cvs and I managed to get Xorg compiled with Xgl enabled but I couldn't get compiz to run because there was no composite extension.

Picture above is a screenshot of my desktop running dropline GNOME on Slackware and Xgl running in a window with KDE as the window manager. It's like running X in X or nested X.

However, I'm still trying... :)

Other links:
Xgl,compiz and Mesa - http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXgl
Dropline GNOME - http://www.droplinegnome.org/