4 ms·

Trying to get compiz/beryl to work on my crappy dell inspiron was probably one of a few indirect factors that resulted in my cushy tech job.

by tjr225 8y ago

iXce 8y ago
I can totally relate :) The hackery you had to do to have the whole stack work was significant and helped a lot grow sysadmin skills for me, and to build fresh versions and hack up new plugins was a great motivation to learn to code in a team-oriented setting.
jordonwii 8y ago
Wow, that's a throwback. It's amazing how little things like that can get you started tinkering. I remember the excitement when my old distro of choice (Mandriva) added compiz support, and then it turned out to be so difficult to get it working (also on an Inspiron, incidentally). Trying to get the kernel modules for Virtualbox working also took an ungodly amount of time for me when I was just starting to tinker with this stuff.
SpaceGorilla 8y ago
Oh man, the memories! I saw the title of this thread and thought "no ways its the same compiz". Somewhere on YouTube is a pretty cringworthly video of me demoing beryl by drawing fire anarchy symbols
zphds 8y ago
Same here! Trawling around forums and mailing lists to try and get Beryl working on my old desktop with a cheap-ass SiS integrated motherboard was quite a learning experience. Dead-ends all around. Also learned what hardware acceleration was all about and that my motherboard's VGA chip specifically didn't support it. The first thing I did after saving up for a new laptop was install gentoo+beryl+gnome on it and rotate my desktop cube in all its hardware accelerated glory. Fun times!
acct1771 8y ago
Anyone wanting to recreate one of these beautiful experiences in a VM should find a likely now defunct distro called Uberyl (Ubuntu+beryl).
TomMarius 8y ago
Same here!
Guillaume86 8y ago
Haha same thing here, I even found some old youtube videos I posted about my setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1I7xXRsoOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1I7xXRsoOM
fredley 8y ago
Oh God yes, I remember doing this. Turning all the effects on was the best! Wobbly windows!
giancarlostoro 8y ago
Don't forget Compiz Fusion, which was eventually merged into Compiz, but that's the one I remember being the hot one. I thought it funny at the time cause KDE could do all the same things too. But I agree with the parent comment, this isn't "little known" if you were using Linux in the mid to late 2000's you were possibly so mesmerized learning the damn thing you looked up ways to make it look and behave in cool ways.
RubberShoes 8y ago
This is hilariously true. My Gateway 7510GX sang on compiz/beryl compared to barely meeting Aero's spec

Trying to get compiz/beryl to work on my crappy dell inspiron was probably one of a few indirect factors that resulted in my cushy tech job.

by tjr225 8y ago

Trying to get compiz/beryl to work on my crappy dell inspiron was probably one of a few indirect factors that resulted in my cushy tech job.

iXce 8y ago

I can totally relate :) The hackery you had to do to have the whole stack work was significant and helped a lot grow sysadmin skills for me, and to build fresh versions and hack up new plugins was a great motivation to learn to code in a team-oriented setting.

jordonwii 8y ago

Wow, that's a throwback. It's amazing how little things like that can get you started tinkering. I remember the excitement when my old distro of choice (Mandriva) added compiz support, and then it turned out to be so difficult to get it working (also on an Inspiron, incidentally). Trying to get the kernel modules for Virtualbox working also took an ungodly amount of time for me when I was just starting to tinker with this stuff.

SpaceGorilla 8y ago

Oh man, the memories! I saw the title of this thread and thought "no ways its the same compiz". Somewhere on YouTube is a pretty cringworthly video of me demoing beryl by drawing fire anarchy symbols

zphds 8y ago

Same here! Trawling around forums and mailing lists to try and get Beryl working on my old desktop with a cheap-ass SiS integrated motherboard was quite a learning experience. Dead-ends all around. Also learned what hardware acceleration was all about and that my motherboard's VGA chip specifically didn't support it. The first thing I did after saving up for a new laptop was install gentoo+beryl+gnome on it and rotate my desktop cube in all its hardware accelerated glory. Fun times!

acct1771 8y ago

Anyone wanting to recreate one of these beautiful experiences in a VM should find a likely now defunct distro called Uberyl (Ubuntu+beryl).

TomMarius 8y ago

Same here!

Guillaume86 8y ago

Haha same thing here, I even found some old youtube videos I posted about my setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1I7xXRsoOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1I7xXRsoOM

fredley 8y ago

Oh God yes, I remember doing this. Turning all the effects on was the best! Wobbly windows!

giancarlostoro 8y ago

Don't forget Compiz Fusion, which was eventually merged into Compiz, but that's the one I remember being the hot one. I thought it funny at the time cause KDE could do all the same things too. But I agree with the parent comment, this isn't "little known" if you were using Linux in the mid to late 2000's you were possibly so mesmerized learning the damn thing you looked up ways to make it look and behave in cool ways.

RubberShoes 8y ago

This is hilariously true. My Gateway 7510GX sang on compiz/beryl compared to barely meeting Aero's spec