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/

ATI releases Linux driver and update

PEOPLE often complain about ATI Linux support. Nvidia rocks with driver support for the OS, and we know that Nvidia has just released a driver supporting the new kernel.

ATI is ready with its own answer, supporting XFree86 4.1, XFree86 4.2, XFree86 4.3 and X.Org 6.8. There is even a 64-bit driver and all of these drivers and XFree86 and the driver itself are version 8.24.8.

The driver supports all the modern graphic cards including X1900, X1800 cards and the older ones too. The big thing is that ATI now supports Avivo, even under Linux, and we do know that many of this community plays with video files than with games.

The Linux driver even has a GUI and you can download it here.

*UPDATE: My machine now uses ATI's proprietary driver and it rocks. The installation is a snap.

How to setup USB Scroll Mouse in Linux

This is my experience in setting up my mouse (USB, scroll mouse) in my new Slackware Linux box. On standard installation, Slack installer did a good job of detecting my USB mouse but did not properly configure it for the scroll wheel. So, I just couldn't use the wheel to scroll down. On my Mandrake system, it did detect my USB mouse and the configured the scroll wheel automagically. This is what I need to add in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf in inputdevice section:

option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"

option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
option "Buttons" "5"

Make sure the Protocol is IMPS/2 because protocol PS/2 does not support scroll wheel. Happy scrolling!...