Matt Schmandt

I have been using Beryl for about two months. Beryl adds OpenGL effects to the desktop; similar to Areo Glass on Vista. From what I have seen in Vista, Microsoft keeps the effects to a minimium. Beryl effects are much more aggresive and very noticable. Beryl does not add any productivity value to the computer but it makes it look much nicer.

Beryl runs well on my laptop and other slower CPU machines. Most of the processing is done on the video card instead of the processor so it does not pull resources away from the CPU. There are many demo videos on YouTube showing Beryl. Here is a good one that shows many of the effects.

The only issue I have been having with Beryl is that it does not yet support two monitors. My main workstation has two monitors and anytime I enable Beryl on it, I get unpredictable results. Every time it is unusable. I typically have to log in on a terminal and kill any Beryl related process to make my desktop usable again. Other than that it works great and I recommend you try it out.

Here is a link to the install guide for Beryl on Gentoo.

Two nights ago The Tech Show had Dan Dennedy, a developer of Kino on. Kino is easy video editing software for Linux. It was made to compete with Apple’s iMovie and Microsoft’s Movie Maker. Kino released version 1.0 about three months ago and has been getting large amounts of press lately. I think this is a great piece of software for Linux desktop users because of its ease of use. Now that 1.0 has been released, Dan said he is going to focus on documentation. His personal goal is to post 2 screencast demos per month.

I installed it to review the interface and menu options. I didn’t really do much with it because I don’t own a camcorder, so I don’t have any home videos to edit. Perhaps in the future I will borrow my parent’s camcorder or just edit some downloaded videos.

The only downside I have heard about is that on Debian based systems the install can get in dependency loops. This can be very frustrating to a user. However, Dan Dennedy said he has posted some instructions to help users through this issue on the Kino website. Kino is very easy to install on Gentoo. The command to install it is “emerge -av kino” and it installed without any issues.

After listening to the hosts on the Linux Linc Tech Show always talking about XFCE, I decided to try it. It is much lighter weight than Gnome and KDE but still has more than Fluxbox.

I following the instructions posted on the Gentoo Wiki for installing XFCE. I installed XFCE 4.2.3.2 on my work laptop and have been very happy with it. It really seems like a good balance between features and speed. I have been running it for over a week and plan on continuing to use it.

I upgraded my Gentoo desktop to Gnome 2.16. I really like many of the new features. The Tomboy note taking app is much better than the old sticky notes applet. I also really like the baobab application. It is an app that shows disk usage in a gui. You can drill into folders and find how much disk space it is taking. There were also many changes to some system UI objects like the file browser and printing dialog box. Overall, I recommend the upgrade.

The Gnome package and most of the dependencies are currently masked so you have to unmask many of them to upgrade. You can unmask a package marked testing with the ~x86 flag by adding a line with the full package name to the /etc/portage/package.keywords file.

Example
echo gnome-base/gnome >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

If the package is blocked by package.mask, it can be overridden by adding a line with the full package name to the /etc/portage/package.unmask file.

Example
echo gnome-base/gnome >> /etc/portage/package.unmask

Below is the list of things I had to add to my package.keywords

gnome-base/gnome
dev-libs/atk
gnome-base/libbonobo
app-text/evince
gnome-base/gnome-applets
x11-libs/libxklavier
x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme
x11-misc/icon-naming-utils
app-editors/gedit
dev-libs/glib
dev-python/gnome-python-desktop
gnome-extra/nautilus-cd-burner
gnome-base/nautilus
gnome-base/eel
x11-libs/gtk+
x11-libs/cairo
x11-libs/libwnck
x11-wm/metacity
gnome-base/gnome-keyring
dev-python/pygtk
dev-python/pygobject
x11-libs/gtksourceview
gnome-base/libgnomeui
gnome-extra/gcalctool
x11-themes/gtk-engines
gnome-base/librsvg
media-video/totem
x11-misc/alacarte
gnome-base/gnome-menus
net-analyzer/gnome-nettool
gnome-base/gnome-panel
media-sound/sound-juicer
app-admin/sabayon
gnome-extra/gconf-editor
gnome-extra/zenity
gnome-base/gdm
x11-terms/gnome-terminal
x11-libs/vte
gnome-base/gnome-session
gnome-base/control-center
gnome-extra/evolution-data-server
mail-client/evolution
net-libs/libsoup
app-arch/file-roller
gnome-extra/gnome-power-manager
gnome-extra/fast-user-switch-applet
gnome-extra/gucharmap
gnome-extra/gtkhtml
gnome-extra/evolution-webcal
gnome-base/libbonoboui
x11-themes/gnome-backgrounds
gnome-extra/gnome-utils
www-client/epiphany
x11-libs/pango
gnome-extra/gnome2-user-docs
gnome-base/libglade
net-print/gnome-cups-manager
gnome-base/gnome-vfs-monikers
gnome-extra/yelp
gnome-base/gnome-desktop
gnome-extra/bug-buddy
gnome-base/libgtop
gnome-base/libgnome
dev-libs/libIDL
x11-themes/gnome-themes
gnome-extra/gnome-media
media-gfx/eog
gnome-base/orbit
app-admin/pessulus
gnome-extra/gnome-keyring-manager
gnome-extra/deskbar-applet
gnome-extra/gnome-games
gnome-extra/gnome-system-monitor

Below is the list of things I had to add to my package.unmask

gnome-base/gnome
gnome-base/libbonobo
gnome-base/gnome-applets
x11-libs/libxklavier
x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme
x11-misc/icon-naming-utils
gnome-base/gnome-vfs
app-editors/gedit
dev-libs/glib
dev-python/gnome-python-desktop
gnome-extra/nautilus-cd-burner
gnome-base/nautilus
gnome-base/eel
x11-libs/gtk+
x11-libs/libwnck
x11-wm/metacity
gnome-base/gnome-keyring
dev-python/pygtk
dev-python/pygobject
x11-libs/gtksourceview
gnome-base/libgnomeui
gnome-extra/gcalctool
x11-themes/gtk-engines
gnome-base/librsvg
media-video/totem
x11-misc/alacarte
gnome-base/gnome-menus
net-analyzer/gnome-nettool
gnome-base/gnome-panel
media-sound/sound-juicer
app-admin/sabayon
gnome-extra/gconf-editor
gnome-extra/zenity
gnome-base/gdm
x11-terms/gnome-terminal
x11-libs/vte
gnome-base/gnome-session
gnome-base/control-center
gnome-extra/evolution-data-server
mail-client/evolution
net-libs/libsoup
app-arch/file-roller
gnome-extra/gnome-power-manager
gnome-extra/fast-user-switch-applet
gnome-extra/gucharmap
gnome-extra/gtkhtml
gnome-extra/evolution-webcal
gnome-base/libbonoboui
x11-themes/gnome-backgrounds
gnome-extra/gnome-utils
www-client/epiphany
x11-libs/pango
gnome-extra/gnome2-user-docs
gnome-base/gnome-vfs-monikers
gnome-extra/yelp
gnome-base/gnome-desktop
gnome-extra/bug-buddy
gnome-base/libgnome
x11-themes/gnome-themes
gnome-extra/gnome-media
media-gfx/eog
gnome-base/orbit
app-admin/pessulus
gnome-extra/gnome-keyring-manager
gnome-extra/deskbar-applet
gnome-extra/gnome-games
gnome-extra/gnome-system-monitor

I am sure the list will change but this should get you started.
After completing the upgrade I recommend a restart of the computer to make sure all the new versions of the apps are running. I had issues trying to get by without a restart.