Cannot choose Beryl as the windows manager

[Sam Varshavchik]

Dotan Cohen writes:

> On 06/05/07, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
>> > Thanks. So, I need to replace:
>> > 1) Vesa/Radeon in xorg.cong to fglrx. This is simply done with VI.
>>
>> Maybe, maybe not.  I doubt that it's as easy as flipping a switch.  First,
>> you need to install ATI's non-free kernel driver.  It's not a part of Fedora
>> because it is not free software.  And it won't magically appear out of
>> nowhere.  You have to install it, and it likely needs to be compiled for the
>> kernel version you're running.  Anytime you update the kernel in the future,
>> you will need to recompile it again.
> 
> Because of this and other reasons (VMWare, for one), I think that I'll
> simply stop updating the kernel. Seriously.

Yes, if you do not have anything directly connected to the Internet, you 
generally don't have to worry about it.  But if you do have a permanent 
connection, then you certainly better keep an eye on kernel updates that 
include fixes for remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities (as there have been); 
then make a judgement call whether eye candy is more important to you than 
not getting hacked.  In all cases, even if you do not have permanent 
Internet connectivity, you still need to evaluate all kernel updates for 
vulnerabilities in potential indirect internal attack vectors, in your 
environment, and make the same judgement call.

Maybe it's just me, but I always found it easier just to buy and support 
hardware that's fully supported by free software.  I don't need these 
headaches.  I always thought that this is what Linux was all about, and if 
someone wants to use non-free, closed source, binary blobs, there are other 
operating systems that work better, and give you as many of them as you 
could possibly want.

>> I do not know if there's a prepackaged ati driver that you can install from
>> some third-party yum repository.  I can't find it in Livna, the usual place
>> for these kinds of things.  I have not looked at ATI's non-free driver, but
>> it's fairly likely that its installation instructions is non-trivial.
>> Welcome to the world of non-free, proprietary software.
> 
> http://rpm.livna.org/livna-switcher.html

Did you actually try this?  Looks to me like this information is out of 
date, at least I can't find these packages in the FC 6 Livna repo.

>> > 2) Xorg with XGL. This is done by installing XGL via yum.
>>
>> No, it's done by installing Xorg, which includes XGL.
> 
> So I probably have it, then. The why isn't there much be that name:
> [dotancohen at localhost ~]$ locate xgl
> /usr/bin/beryl-xgl
> /usr/share/apps/kdesktop/programs/xglobe.desktop
> /usr/share/man/man1/beryl-xgl.1.gz
> [dotancohen at localhost ~]$

The reason there's nothing by that name is the same reason you won't find a 
distinct package called "smtp", even though whatever mail software you're 
using must certainly implement it.

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