Installing Ubuntu Beryl on Compaq EVO N600C with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 YL
By ET
It is very hard to install the nice visual effects in Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10/Compiz+Beryl on Compaq EVO N600C due to the driver issues related to ATI Radeon cards.
I tried a few times, all ended up getting x server dead. Now I’d like to record what I’ve done right along the way.
After successful installation, modify the original /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
To the following file:
Press Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace to reload the xserver. (or give the command: # sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart) Then glxinfo gives the right output for “direct rendering”. It seems that something called Envy can do the trick, I haven’t tried it yet. More information can be found here. Evy can be downloaded here.
If go to System->Preferences->Appearance-> Special Effects, and click the highest level, there is a box saying Desktop Effects can not be enabled.
When I tried to ” sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager”, it tells me that the file is not found. Go to System->Admin->Software Sources. On the first tab check universe is ticked. Then it installs fine.
To solve the “Desktop Effects” problem, one needs to solve the compiz driver problem.
compiz wouldn’t start untill /usr/bin/compiz modified and lines starting from 228 in function check_texture_
are commented out.
#if [ $VRES -gt $TEXTURE_LIMIT ] || [ $HRES -gt $TEXTURE_LIMIT ];
then
# verbose “Failed.\n”
# return 1;
#fi
#verbose “Passed.\n”
I then installed all related packages:
compiz
compizconfig-
compiz-core
compiz-dev
compiz-
compiz-
compiz-gnome
compiz-plugins
libcompizconfig0
libcompizconfig
libcompizconfig
libdecoration0
python-compizconfig
This does not solve the problem though. The XGL service seems to be running now due to installing the missing packages. I tried to install it by “sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl”, it gave me a crash.
Finally, I found a note on the Beryl website, saying that we should add one line in the Device section of the xorg.conf file.
The final file is here:
It works not bad, but you can see artifacts on the screen. I’ll try to figure it out next time.
UPDATE:
It is completely working now. Having all the effects I wanted, and the system is quite stable. I even applied some Mac themes to it. Excellent system indeed. On this laptop, it would be extremely hard to install Vista as it is a Pentium III CPU with 512M memory. The video card is not very good, but Compiz-Beryl works amazingly well on it. If I hadn’t had my new real Mac, I’d be using this system on all my machines.
What about Windows-only programs I need to run? There are very good virtualization packages, such as “Virtualbox”, “CrossOver”. The first one is totally free. The second one is non-free, but you don’t have to install Windows, everything is integrated in the hosting system, very cool.
It took me two days (not full time, of course) to get everything up and running, compared to Mac, it is still a bit too much. For those who desperately look for hacked versions of Mac OS X Leopard, installing free Linux can be a good alternative.
Oh, this laptop is known for the clicking noise from the HDD. It is related to Head Parking of the HDD. It’s acpi power save which do this “clicks”. Did the following :
hdparm -S 4 /dev/sda
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
to stop it, you can do
/etc/init.d/laptop-mode stop
hdparm -S 0 /dev/sda
hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
This command disable totally hard disk spin down.
To do this permanent, I did:
rm /etc/rc2.d/S99laptop-mode
and in /etc/hdparm.conf file add:
command_line {
hdparm -q -m16 -q -W0 -q -d1 -S 20 -B 255 /dev/sda
}
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I also played with Linux for a long time. I have figured out, after trying around 10 Unix/BSD/Linux distributions, that SUSE and Ubuntu are the two best ones.
It seems that you are a professor who enjoys playing around with softwares.
In that case, you might also want to try out SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). Installing hardward and 3D effects is totally automatic on that. It is a supported product.
The advantages compared to Ubuntu? Well, it is better supported and we are not expected to encounter such problems. Thus we can better focus on our major job, scientific research majorly related to the theory, while having fun with Linux at the same time.
That’s my personal opinion.
It might be wrong. In that case please forgive me and ignore my suggestions. 
p.s. SLED can be downloaded and used for free. However, if you want to get automatic updates after 3 month period you have to subscribe to it for US$50/year.
p.s.2. I am using Windows … Because I need to write some software from time to time and their software development tools are much better and allows me to focus on my major job. Otherwise I would go with SLED.
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Windows is doing increasingly better these years. The particular strength of Linux is probably shell and command line. The guys at Microsoft have come out with an unbelievably innovative product called Windows Power Shell. It is still at a very early stage so that I don’t recommend you to try it out. But I think most well trained software engineer can appreciate its beauty even at this early stage.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Thanks for the comments. I did it not because I like to play with systems, the old laptop is less often used these days, so I just want to see if I can increase the performance and the aesthetics at the same time.
Some day when my primary laptop dies, I need to have a back up system. Also, in rugged environments (e.g. when Ashley wants to play a game), I prefer not to use my MB Pro.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:11 am
This works excellent on my n600c, thanks alot!
November 7th, 2007 at 3:14 am
sorry for double posting but just one more thing. How did you get rid of the artifacts?
November 8th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I don’t know when it disappeared. Somehow, after a few reboots while I was installing various packages, the artifacts are gone.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:40 am
I followed this to a tee, but cannot get this to work. The end result is ALWAYS me logging in, and getting a blank screen (human background color) and a mouse; that’s it. I have to remove compiz and use failsafe terminal, running gnome-session manually, rebooting, just to be able to login again. Any ideas, suggestions? I have a Compaq Evo N600c, so I don’t understand why this won’t work.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Thanks for this! Will try it out on my friends laptop as soon as I get the new 1GB of RAM and new battery from ebay. Just a thought, I believe this laptop series comes with two different monitor types, one with a resolution of 1400×1050 and the other with 1024×768, could this be affecting peoples’ results? How do I tell which one my friends laptop has? Other than the resolution values themselves, would I have to change any settings in the xorg.conf using the alternate screen? Appreciate the feedback.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
the 1024×768 screen should be easier to configure.
If you already have an OS, you can check in the current OS for the resolution.
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