Testing AIXGL + Beryl in Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)

Hi there,

I was playing with AIXGL for a time and I realized that the performance with the Radeon 9200 was MUCH better than with XGL. To activate the X.org AIXGL I only added 2 lines on my xorg.conf and to use the AIXGL, you don’t need to create another session like the XGL.

I used this tutorial (The tutorial is for ATI and Nvidia cards.): http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/Edgy/AiGLX

Everything was ok, but looks like there is a problem on the video overlay. Sometimes you can see the video, sometimes don’t. Then, I saw this in the tutorial:

Please note: ATI Cards : Depending on your card you may find that you can use the ati/radeon driver with AIGLX. If you experience problems then you may need to use Xgl with the fglrx Driver. 

I will try this and I will post the results.

If you need help installing the fglrx or the ati/radeon driver, use the steps on this tutorial https://odintsoff.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/english-ubuntu-610-ati-radeon-xgl-beryl/

C’ya!

(English) Ubuntu 6.10 + ATI Radeon + XGL + Beryl

Hi there,

In order to help the international comunity that find my site using search engines, I will post here the English version of my Ubuntu 6.10 + ATI Radeon + XGL + Beryl tutorial.

This is the way that I found to XGL + Beryl work on my Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) with ATI Radeon 9200, but I belive that this tutorial works for any ATI video card. The fglrx is not supported and need to be removed.

Well, enough talking, let’s get to work!

1- INSTALLING XGL AND GRAPHIC ACCELERATOR

1.1- Disable “Composite”

Open a terminal and do the following:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add these lines at the end:
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "0″
EndSection

1.2 – Enable the aditional repositories

Open sources.list this way:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

look for these lines:
#deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
#deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
and remove the “#”. Close it and save.

1.3 – Finishing the video driver installation

Do the following in a terminal, this will update your distribution, install the restricted modules for your kernel, the “fglrx” ATI driver and configure your xorg.conf to use the new driver.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a
sudo aticonfig –initial
sudo aticonfig –overlay-type=Xv


With this done, you can restart your system and the ATI driver will be working.

2- INSTALLING THE FREE DRIVER OF ATI

2.1- Removing the “fglrx” from ATI

Now that we installed the drivers, we need to remove it! We installed “fglrx” to make the right adjustments to the xorg.conf. To remove the drivers, we need to open Synaptic and remove every package with “fglrx” and “linux-restricted-modules”.

But, if any device that you have needs the restricted modules, an alternative is to only deactivate the fglrx (if you don’t need it, jump to the next step):

run:
sudo gedit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

in the bottom, find:
DISABLED_MODULES=""

and change to:
DISABLED_MODULES="fglrx"

2.2- Installing the free drivers of ATI:

Open the terminal and just:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati

2.3- Editing xorg.conf

To activate the driver, with the already configured xorg.conf with the “fglrx” driver, just look on your xorg.conf for the section Device and change the string on the line Driver to “radeon”. In my case, the section Device will be:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE]"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "UseFBDev" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip"
Option "ColorTiling"
EndSection

Restart and now you will have the free ATI driver working.

3 – INSTALLING XGL AND BERYL.

3.1 – Adding the repository

Open and edit sources.list with:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following：
deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz edgy main-edgy
salve e feche.

Download the key and add it doing this:
wget http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Update your apt-get:
sudo apt-get update

3.2 – Downloading the packager

Downloading the packages for XGL and Beryl:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl libgl1-mesa xserver-xorg libglitz-glx1 beryl beryl-core beryl-manager beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data beryl-settings emerald emerald-themes

4- CREATING A SESSION FOR XGL

Ok, all done! But wait, now we need to add a session for XGL on your Ubuntu.

4.1 – Creating a initialization script

Make a new file:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/startgnomexgl.sh

and we add:
#!/bin/sh
Xgl -fullscreen :1 -ac -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer &
sleep 2
export DISPLAY=:1
exec gnome-session

and make it executable with:
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/startgnomexgl.sh

4.2 – Adding the session to your login at GDM – GNOME Display Manager

run:
sudo gedit /usr/share/xsessions/xgl.desktop

in the file, paste the following:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Xgl
Comment=Start an Xgl Session
Exec=/usr/bin/startgnomexgl.sh
Icon=
Type=Application

save and close it.

5 – TESTING

Now it good to go! Close your session and in the login screen click in “Options” and “Choose Session…”. Choose XGL and start.

If your Gnome looks “old”, without style, run “gnome-settings-daemon”. To start Beryl, run “beryl-manager”. If you see the Beryl splash screen, congratulations!

I hope this english version of my tutorial help you to install XGL/Beryl! Sorry for any possible english mistakes. If you have some comment about the tutorial (or maybe about my english!), I will be happy to hear it.

See ya!

– Ivan Odintsoff