Wobbling Debian Etch
In other news, Debian Etch rocks!
Recently after having some friends ask me what’s so great about linux on my desktop, I decided to pull out the big guns and really impress them. I decided to install beryl.
Now I’ve tried this procedure before with some sucess – I installed compiz and XGL on my main PC with a Radeon 9600. It was hell to get DRI working with the binary drivers, setup XGL, hack up GDM, and finally get compiz to work, and it didn’t look or feel that different.
This time was completely different.
My laptop (The wonderful Sony VAIO PCG-TR1mp) has an Intel i810 (I think, it might be 830, 850, 915, or something weird like that), which has open source drivers in the kernel and in Xorg. I had previously rolled my own kernel (To get my Wacom tablet working, I needed newer than the 2.6.18 builtin to Etch), so it was dead easy to compile in the DRM module for the graphics. I hit upon a slight problem when Xorg refused to use DRI because I had selected the i810 driver – one quick dive into menuconfig to change this to 915, reboot, restart X, and I had DRI. From there I configured xorg.conf (Using the gentoo instructions of course) for DRI and AIGLX. Restart xorg, glxinfo / glxgears, and it’s all fine and dandy.
I hit upon a slight snag when I noticed beryl wasn’t available in etch, only compiz – one quick google search and adding a new repository (Don’t have the URL handy at the moment, will add it later), then I could apt-get beryl and emerald-themes. Restart Xorg, start beryl-manager in an xterm, select WM as beryl, and we have wobbly windows, jelly on the desktop, and desktops on a dice. Wahoo!
In other (again) news: GCSE mock exams start next week, therefore I will be mentally scarred for the remainer of my life. It’s been nice knowing you. Lucky bastards with the modular GCSEs.
