Saturday, October 28, 2006

Life on Edgy

It looks the same, it feels the same... well, the login screen is updated, and the boot splash. I wish I had recorded my boot time running Dapper, but I timed Edgy at 29 seconds from the boot menu to the login prompt. Not bad. It then takes 7 seconds for my desktop to appear after I login.

I found that Edgy now comes with a generic kernel, ie. it supports SMP, but SMP is automatically disabled when the processor does not support it. This means new installations automatically make the most of the CPU they are installed on.

I found, to my surprise (hough I have to admit I was hoping for it) that my ATI Radeon now works, with hardware acceleration, and OpenGL. Graphics now feel a lot faster than they used to, and a whole load of programs and screensavers that refused to run now move like lightning.

It meant I could afford some customisations, so here is my chance to show them off.





Yep, reminds me of Vista too. Only thing is, it runs faster :)

My windows are no longer inflexible rectangles. When I drag them, they bend, and wobble when I let them go. It had my 4 year-old brother laughing like you've never seen.

Letting go of a window also causes ripples to spread across the desktop:



and my four virtual desktops are accessed by choosing a side if a rotatable cube (yes, that is TuxRacer you see :P):



I plan on writing a how-to for this, and post it the Ubuntu forums or wiki. Currently there doesn't exist one for Xubuntu/Xfce, as it takes some hacking. It's well worth it though :P

EDIT: I just noticed the distortion in some of the images. That's not how it looks, but the tool I used to take screenshots. Use your imagination to know what it looks like really :)

1 comments:

Paul said...

Man, did you use Compiz, XGL and all that sh*t? Those were slow! I know it's the future X server but it is(was?) in development and beta stage. Is that stable for you? Did you do that or did Ubuntu Edgy come like that? Does your OGL apps run faster with(out) the Compiz thing. I also know you need to enable or it is enabled, the Composite extension which it damn slow if you'd ask me. Yes this is the future desktop, Vista may be at it already but Linux is way faster ;)

BTW - Nice new blog look, it's much better! If only you'd write more often, and now that you have about what to write (Linux/Ubuntu).