Ubuntu 7.04 (codenamed Feisty Fawn) became available on the 19th of April 2007. Since then I’ve downloaded the ISO file of the Desktop edition and installed it on my notebook. As of May 4th 2007 I installed it on my desktop computer too.
The setup process
Downloaded the Desktop edition ISO from bittorrent, burned it and then rebooted the whole system. Started the installation and partitioned the HDD from within the graphical setup. Now I have a dual boot with Linux and Windows XP.
This is a Window Manager you can find on a standard linux system.
Go tell the Aereo developers that this stuff runs on my old Desktop Athlon XP CPU with a 5 years old ATI 9500 card too
Beryl (or the 3D rotating cube desktop-effect)
A little background
Beryl is a Window Manager that runs over an accelerated X server. You need an X server like XGL or AIGLX (this one is built into Ubuntu Feisty and works out-of-the-box). Since I had to use the proprietary ATI driver to get full 3D acceleration on my laptop (recent ATI cards like mine are not supported by the open source drivers) I had to install XGL and Beryl.
Basically, if you own an ATI card, you have 2 paths:
- the card is pretty old and so it’s supported by the open source drivers - You can use AIGLX (built in into Feisty Fawn) and the “Desktop Effects” that ship with it.
- your card is somewhat new (I have an X1600 on my laptop) and so you have to use the non opensource drivers which are not compatible with AIGLX. You have to download XGL then and get beryl to work with it. A little more complicated…
Since my system is an Intel Core 2 Duo (centrino duo) T5600 running at 1,83Ghz with an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 I followed this how-to:
Install Beryl on Ubuntu Feisty with XGL.
It’s a bit tedious but worked.
Just remember to get the ATI drivers via the Restricted Driver Manager in Ubuntu before doing this all (if you need them).