Installing Beryl-SVN on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn + ATI Radeon Mobility 300 + Open source driver for ATI

Disclaimer: All the steps mentioned below are my own experiences and not necessarily represent the most efficient/correct method of installing Beryl-SVN on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

My Hardware configuration:

DELL Inspiron 9300 laptop
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon Mobility 300
RAM: 1 GB
Processor: Intel P-4 1.6 GHZ
Dual boot operating system with 20GB allotted to Ubuntu Fesity Fawn 7.0.4 and 40GB to Windows XP

Although there are lot of tutorials and articles available on WWW regarding installation of Beryl-SVN on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, unfortunately, none of them worked for my configuration. Hence, the idea of coming up with this article to share installation procedure that worked for me.

Basically, there are two ways to configure Beryl with your ATI graphics card –

1. Using closed source driver provided by ATI + XGL and

2. Using open source driver + AIGLX.

I will be describing the second way of installing it. I haven't tried the first method at all. Although the steps below are for installing and configuring Beryl on ATI Radeon Mobility 300 graphics card, with few tweaks, these can be used to install Beryl on any of the ATI graphics card.

Following steps are the result of some trial and error methods that I have tried out to make Beryl-SVN work for me:

Section I - Installing and ensuring that open source driver is being used for ATI graphics card

1. Open up a console window.

2. Execute command "su" and login using root password (remember to do this as the first step everytime you open up a new console window failing which you won't have permission to execute below mentioned commands).

3. Execute command "lspci | grep VGA" and find out the name of the ATI graphics card. Ensure that it is ATI graphics card.

4. Execute command "glxinfo | grep vendor". If you see ATI somewhere in the output it indicates that you are using the closed source driver. If you see "SGI" as the "server glx vendor string" and "client glx vendor string" then directly jump to step # 7 else continue with steps below.

5. On your Ubuntu desktop open "System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager". If you see entry for ATI graphics card checked, uncheck it, close the dialog and restart your system. Repeat step # 4 above once the system is restarted.

6. For some reason if you are unable to see an entry for ATI graphics card in "Restricted Driver Manager" or you are unable to uncheck it there is an alternative way to uninstall the closed source driver - Open "System->Administration->Synaptic package Manager", click on search and search for a package named "xorg-driver-fglrx". If it has a green color in the checkbox before it, right click the checkbox and select "Mark for complete removal". Also mark package named “xorg-driver-fglrx-dev” for complete removal. Click on "Apply", let the packages be uninstalled and restart your system once done.

7. Open a console window and execute command "glxinfo | grep direct". You should see "direct rendering: Yes". If you see a "No" value for direct rendering then please troubleshoot your driver and make sure you have right driver installed for your graphics card.

At the end of section I you should have the open source driver installed for your graphics card and system restarted to be able to proceed to Section II.

Section II - Editing the xorg.conf file to have additional options for graphics card and other changes

1. Open up a console window.

2. Execute command "su" and login using root password (remember to do this as the first step everytime you open up a new console window failing which you won't have permission to execute below mentioned commands).

3. Execute command "gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf". This should open a new text editor window with file xorg.conf opened in it. Do following modifications in the file:

- Under section "Device" for your ATI graphics card add following lines before the "End Section" line

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"
Option "AccelDFS" "true"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"

Also ensure that value for “Driver” is “ati”.

- Ensure that you have following two sections, if not add them to your xorg.conf file at the end of file

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

- Under section "Screen" ensure that following values are set appropriately

value for “DefaultDepth” should be “24”
in sub-section “Display”for depth 24 value of modes should be 1280x800

- Under section "Module" ensure that you have following entries. If not present add them.

Load "dri"
Load "vbe"
Load "glx"

- Under section “ServerLayout” ensure that you have following entry

Option "AIGLX" "true"

Once all the above changes are made, save the changes and close the file.

4. Restart your X server by pressing Ctrl-Alt-backspace keys.

At the end of section II you should have successfully made all required changes in the xorg.conf file. If you are facing problems with X server after the changes you can login using a command prompt, edit the file again and revert the changes.

Section III - Installing Beryl Feisty version (0.2.1)

1. First we need to get the latest Beryl Feisty version and install it. This is because downloading the Beryl-SVN version directly on Ubuntu Fiesty results in some unresolved package errors.

2. On Ubuntu desktop open "System->Administration->Software Sources". Click on the "Third Party" tab. Click on "Add" and add "deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org feisty main".

3. Lets now download the key required for the packages. Download the key by copy pasting this URL in your firefox browser window “http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg” and save it to your Desktop location. Now go back to the “Software Sources” and click on "Authentication" tab, click "Import key file" and import the key file saved on your Desktop.

4. Now close the dialog and while closing choose an option to "Reload". If you are asked to install the updates first go ahead and do it now.

5. Once the reload is complete, open "System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager". Click on "Search" button and search for "beryl". In the search results returned, right click on checkbox before "beryl" package and select "Mark for installation". If prompted to automatically mark the dependent packages, click on "Mark" button.

6. Now search for "emerald-themes" package and select the "emerald-themes" package for installation in the search results returned.

7. Click on "Apply" and install all the selected packages.

8. Once the installation is done restart your machine.

9. Once the machine is restarted open up a console window and execute command "sudo beryl-manager --no-force-window-manager".

10. If the installation was successful you should see a red colored diamond on your task bar.

11. Right click on the Red Diamond and select "Gnome Window Manager" under "Select Window Manager"

12. Right click on the Red Diamond and select "Automatic" for all "Advanced Beryl Options".

13. Right click on the Red Diamond and select "Beryl" under "Select Window Manager". Don't move your mouse or click anything until the window manager gets completely loaded. My system freezes if I do so in my case.

If everything goes fine you should see Beryl in action at the end of Section III. This can be verified by trying to drag the title bar of any firefox window and you should experience elasticity in the title bar.

Section IV - Upgrading Beryl Feisty Version to Beryl-SVN

1. Restart your machine.

2. On Ubuntu desktop open "System->Administration->Software Sources". Click on the "Third Party" tab. Click on "Add" and add "deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb edgy beryl-svn" and "deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb edgy beryl-svn". Also delete off the previous entry that you had added in section III step # 2 above.

3. Lets now download the key required for the packages. Download the key by copy pasting this URL in your firefox browser window “http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb/DD800CD9.gpg” and save it to your Desktop location. Now go back to the “Software Sources” and click on "Authentication" tab, click "Import key file" and import the key file saved on your Desktop.

4. Now close the dialog and while closing choose an option to "Reload".

5. Once the reload is complete, open "System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager". Click on "Search" button and search for "beryl". In the search results returned, right click on checkbox before following packages and select either “Mark for complete installation” or "Mark for upgrade", as applicable: aquamarine, beryl, beryl-core, beryl-manager, beryl-plugins, beryl-plugins-data, beryl-plugins-unsupported, beryl-plugins-unsupported-data, beryl-settings, beryl-settings-simple, emerald, heliodor, libberyldecoration0, libberylsettings0, libberylsettings0-gconf, libemeraldengine0. Note: Don't mark "beryl-settings" package as this package will throw some broken repository error and won't let you mark for upgrade. You can ignore this package and mark rest of them for upgrade/install.

6. Now search for "emerald-themes" package and mark it for complete upgrade.

7. Finally click on "Apply" button and upgrade/install all the selected packages.

8. Once done restart your machine.

9. After the machine is restarted open up a console and execute command "sudo beryl --version". The version displayed should be “beryl-core 0.3.0-svn”.

10. Start up beryl by following steps # 9 to 13 of Section III.

If something is broken and you want to revert back and uninstall beryl there are tutorials available on WWW which should work as it is. Also, you can find other tutorials which will enable beryl to start automatically once you start up Ubuntu. Those are pretty much standard and work without any tweaks.