May
10
I was looking at some of the most popular posts on my blog, as reported by my awstats installation, and I noticed that one of the most popular is a post outlining common keyboard shortcuts for Compiz-Fusion on Ubuntu 7.10. Apparently everybody loves their eye-candy!
I thought, now that Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” is released, I’d update the basic configuration suggestions and hopefully help a few more of you get your bling-on.
The Compiz-Check Script
Recently I saw a post over at Forlong’s Blog releasing a script that will check your hardware in regards to Compiz support. From the article:
Compiz-Check is a script to test if Compiz is able to run on your system/setup and if not, it will tell you the reason why.
If you’ve had issues with Compiz support in the past I’d suggest running this script and pay attention to the output towards reasons why it appears to be unsupported. In some cases it is simply a matter of poor hardware. In other cases its only a matter of software changes, and may help you get things going.
To download and run the script:
wget http://blogage.de/files/3729/download -O compiz-check
chmod +x compiz-check
./compiz-check
If everything comes out as “OK” you should be able to activate Compiz as seen in the Compiz configuration instructions.
Driver Support With Envy
Another very useful tool I’ve found is the Envy tool, which will install required non-free driver support for nvidia or ATI cards for you. I’ll admit that I’ve only used this occasionally, considering I have intel graphics cards on my main laptops, but in the situations where I have needed it things have worked great.
If you are using Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” you can try the newer EnvyNG, which is available in the universe repository. How to install EnvyNG on Ubuntu 8.04.
If you are still using a previous version of Ubuntu you can try the legacy version of Envy, instructions here.
Are there any other common tips that I’ve missed? If you know of any other great resources for Compiz support tests, nvidia or ATI driver installation, or basic Compiz tweaks please comment and share with the rest of us.
I post tutorials very regularly on this site. You may want to consider subscribing to the RSS feed. Or if you'd prefer these tips sent to your inbox you can use Email Subscriptions.
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3 Responses to “Compiz-Check and EnvyNG Configuration Tips : Ubuntu 8.04”
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From Forlongs blog again:
http://forlong.blogage.de/article/2008/4/26/-How-to-set-up-Compiz-Fusion-074-included-in-Ubuntu-804-Hardy-Heron
Great article for helping fresh newbies setup their Compiz effects nicely.
Envy is, at this point in time, worthless - it is only capable of installing precisely the same driver releases found already in Hardy, meaning all it does is duplicate the work of the Hardware Drivers screen.
This is notable because there is a newer (beta) driver from NVIDIA which adds support for 19 devices unsupported by Ubuntu, including very popular recent cards (the entire 9 series) - but this is NOT installable in any Ubuntu-friendly way
envyNG is great. I had been without nvidia drivers for nearly six months, on both ubuntu 7.10 and 8,04; after an update broke my system. Tried everything to fix it, reverting to old kernel and nvidia drivers, google, forums, nothing helped.
Finally, last month, one last googling, saw envyNG and tried it. That nvidia spalsh screen really made my day. And it survived the latest updates as well. Alberto Milone is the greatest.