Thursday, April 19, 2007

A sneak peak at ImpiLinux 7.05

For the last couple of months our team has been hard at work to get our new desktop ready. This desktop is derived from Ubuntu 7.04 and represents more or a "Ubuntu for business" kind of experience.

But before I get ahead of myself, here are some screen shots, expect more to come as we run up to our official public release in May 2007... we're just still busy adding the finishing touches...

The usplash screen (progress bar during bootup) as it is so far...


The GDM session screen (initial user logon) as it looks so far...


The default desktop...

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Compiz and Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (ATI X1400 + fglrx + compiz)

After a long struggle I have finally managed to create an easily reproducible method of starting Compiz with ATI X1400 and restricted drivers on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). Feisty aims to support Compiz via AIGLX (as far as I could tell), the best way to get it running though is through Xgl.

First thing you will need to do is get the fglrx driver from ATI. The best way to enable this is:

1. Enable ATI accelerated graphics driver

System -> Administration -> Restricted Driver Manager

It is recommended that you restart your computer after you "select enable".

2. Grab the following listing and put it in a file called xgl.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Xgl
Comment=Start an Xgl Session
Exec=/usr/local/bin/startxgl
Icon=
Type=Application
3. sudo cp xgl.desktop /usr/share/xsessions/

4. Grab the following listing and put it in a file called startcompiz
#!/bin/bash # # Start beryl-manager within gnome-session # if (( `ps -A -o comm | grep -c '^Xgl$'` == "1" )); then DISPLAY=:1 gnome-settings-daemon & DISPLAY=:1 compiz --replace else echo "${0}: Error: compiz not launched. Xgl not running?" fi

5. sudo cp startcompiz /usr/local/bin/

5a. sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/startcompiz

6. Grab the following listing and put it in a file called startxgl
#!/bin/sh
Xgl -fullscreen :1 -ac -br -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer &
sleep 4
export DISPLAY=:1
exec gnome-session

7. sudo cp startxgl /usr/local/bin/

7a. sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/startxgl

8. sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

9. System -> Preferences -> Sessions -> New


- Name : Compiz
- Command: startcompiz


10. You will need to Log Out, then login using the Session : Xgl

You should now have compiz :-)

11. sudo apt-get install gnome-compiz-manager

You find this program under System -> Preferences -> GL Desktop to fine-tune compiz.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Funnier things have happened

So this morning I walk out of the house to find my Honda S2000 on bricks - all 4 wheels gone... I've had better days...