My Experience of Beryl on Feisty Fawn

I finally installed Beryl on a nvidia GeForce based machine.

I had to

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl beryl-ubuntu beryl-manager emerald-themes

Had to add Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" to my device section to get the Window titles back. I was also suggested to make DefaultDepth 24 in my Screen section of xorg.conf

One I had done this, restart X/Gnome and do a beryl-manager to get going. Little buggy but its worth the fun watching windows flying around :). Expose feature ! Wow!

I like the Beryl Manager > General Options > Shortcuts / Commands feature so that I can get my terminal open if I press Alt-t - ofcourse you could add any command that you want - say launch Firefox. Doing this in metacity involved some hacking through the gconf-editor

The options just stunned me - you could basically own what you want to do - you could configure anything and everything. Move over Vista

What I love as of now

1. Screen Edges

2. Desktop CUBE - wOw!

3. Configuration options

4. Stunning effects.

5. Non GPLed Themes - Sorry :)

6. Haven't had a crash yet :) Ok, It just doesn't like rxvt in the background, crashes pretty regularly. My system hangs once in a while. Ugh, SAD!
Late night fun!

Slow Ubuntu Bootup ? Disable fsck on vfat

If you have installed Feisty and notice that your bootup is really slow - fsck might be one of the causes - dosfsck which is called via fsck everytime you boot takes quite a bit of time and slows down the boot process dramatically.

You can disable the fsck check by changing the entry "1" (checks file system everytime) to "0"

So, your fstab entry for vfat partitions would look something like this

UUID=301C-1A1D /media/hda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 0

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04

Ubuntu 7.04 comes packed with a host of new features including data migration from Windows, new and easier ways to install multimedia codecs, binary drivers, as well as networking improvements and of course, GNOME 2.18, the 2.6.20 kernel and more.

Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support.

Windows migration tool - The new migration tool recognises Internet Explorer favorites, Firefox bookmarks, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, Yahoo IM contacts and imports them in Ubuntu. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual partition. In addition to single accounts, you can migrate several users' settings in Ubuntu.

Playing an MP3 or other media file just got a lot easier. If the required pieces are not yet installed, 7.04 will get the correct codecs for you, no more searching and no need for long and complicated instructions.

Stunning new desktop effects are available as a technology preview for users who choose to enable them. They remain turned off by default, for the benefit of users with older or less powerful chips and certain non-supported graphics cards.

New in 7.04 is Network Manager, a simple way to find and connect to wireless and wired networks. With a single click, view all the available wireless networks and their strengths. For those on a secured network, WPA support is built in right out of the box

Feisty features all new artwork; check out the new Desktop Background image, and a boot-up splash image that has more 'bling'. The new theme also includes a polished icon set.

Download here

Ubuntu Community Magazine

FullCircle - the Ubuntu magazine has a brief history of the various versions of Ubuntu as well as the preview of the upcoming Feisty Fawn release. Download it from the link below

Download link

Ubuntu 7.04 on CDs !

Ubuntu will be shipping the Feisty Fawn CDs through the Shipit service. This might be in very soon - Feisty Fawn is scheduled to be released on Apr 19 2007 - Check here

Among the prominent features are the Xorg 7.2 server, Graphical Desktop Effects, New Artwork, Automatic media detection, codec installation, new Games - Chess, Sudoku

Edgy (6.1) wasn't available in the Shipit service

Keep checking Shipit :)