Installing Beryl on Xubuntu

I installed Beryl today on my 64-bit Xubuntu. I have a Compaq Presario R3370 notebook with AMD64 and nVidia 440 graphics card. The install was very straightforward and I found most of my information here and here.

Note – this works only on nVidia graphics cards and XFCE.

Here is what I did to get Beryl on my newly installed Xubuntu Edgy Eft.

1. Add the Beryl repository in /etc/apt/sources.list

Append this line to sources.list:

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main

Run this command from the console

wget http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add –

2. Update and upgrade

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

3. Install the packages

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl libgl1-mesa xserver-xorg libglitz-glx1 beryl emerald emerald-themes

Beryl is now installed.

4. To configure Beryl to startup, create the file /usr/bin/startxgl.sh

sudo emacs /usr/bin/startxgl.sh

Add these lines:

#!/bin/sh
# Start up Xgl and Xfce
# Run Xgl server on :1, on top of normal X
Xgl :1 -fullscreen -ac -accel xv -accel glx:pbuffer &
# Tell subsequent X programs to access the Xgl server at :1
DISPLAY=:1
# Start Beryl
beryl-manager
# Start Xfce
exec xfce4-session

5. Give execute permission to xgl.sh

sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/startxgl.sh

6. To add a menu item in the login screen, create the file /usr/share/xsessions/xgl.desktop

sudo emacs /usr/share/xsessions/xgl.desktop

Add these lines:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Beryl
Exec=/usr/bin/startxgl.sh
Icon=
Type=Application

When you login to XFCE, you can select Beryl by clicking on Sessions.

Here are a couple of screenshots of Beryl I took earlier.

I will update this page when I get screenshots of the Beryl Cube effect.