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Beryl User Interface for Linux Reviewed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yo-ho-ho-and-a-beryl-of-rum dept.

techie writes "OSWeekly.com has published a review of Beryl, a very cool looking UI for Linux. Matt Hartley writes, "This release, in my opinion, was the most over-hyped and bug-filled to date. You will have to really hit Technorati to see more of what I'm talking about, but Feisty is as buggy as the beta I tested a short time ago. After completely tossing into the wilds of the ubber-buggy "network-manager," anything running with Edgy supported RT2500 driver shows up, but it will not connect without a special script. Those of you who are on Feisty and need help with your RT2500 cards are welcome to e-mail me for the bash script."

8 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Network-manager blaim game by KeyserDK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if it's the rt2500 that isn't working then it's most likely isn't network-manager, but your driver. Please complain about the correct part(s) ;)

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    still reading?
    1. Re:Network-manager blaim game by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A release of an OS distro that is supposedly the great hope of Linux for the consumer desktop, knowing full-well that it's default setup will break wireless networking for anyone using RALink chipsets is a great big fucking mistake on Canonical's part. It may not be a bug in the OS per se, but the second the "average user" that Ubuntu is supposedly trying to win over upgrades and finds that their wireless stops working is an immediate black mark on the desktop Linux concept. This is especially true since we're talking about networking here. If support for some random peripheral like a printer or a camera failed then that's one thing, but with Linux's absolute reliance on net access to solve problems a broken wireless setup could well have just removed the user's only hope of solving the problem. Leaving the user looking for that Windows CD they were led to believe they'd never need again.

      You can go on and on about how this isn't the OS's fault, but you'll be missing the point. The end user doesn't care whether it was the OS proper that's responsible or "merely" a driver that was provided with it. The bottom line is that what worked in 6.06 and 6.10 works no more and as long as things like this continue and worse, are defended with irrelevant arguments like yours, the further Linux looks from ever becoming a legitimate OS for the average computer user.

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      Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  2. Re:After reading TFA... by JanneM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is sort-of off topic to the Beryl thing (but then the reviewer didn't manage to stay on topic either), but my experience of Feisty is that it is a lot more stable and supports more stuff out of the box than Edgy ever did for me - and that includes NetworkManager, which so far has been working with both my Wifi and wired network without a single hitch.

    Of course, it all depends on exactly what hardware you have. Which means that making sweeping statements on any distributions' hardware compatibility is pretty senseless based on the experience of one machine.

    --
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  3. Re:Could we have that in English please by cosmocain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    full ack.

    and - actually - (without the article) i'm still looking for a correlation between the headline and the abstract.
    one step further: beryl is buggy? please - take a look at the version-number. included in ubuntu is 0.2 (NULLDOTTWO): this is a mere testing release, not a final and stable. and: it's not enabled in ubuntu by default.

    to sum it up: nothing to see here, please move along.

  4. Beta Software by onion2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe that one day Beryl will prove to be a fantastic option for the casual PC user. However, until it leaves Beta, this is best left to people who have a machine that they can take some risks with.


    This is Google's fault. People have come to expect Betaware to be essentially a finished application. It isn't. Final is finished. Beta is for testing. If it's at the point where it works and the devs think they've sorted all the showstoppers then it's a release candidate.

    So yes, the author is right, casual users definitely should leave this alone until it's done. That's what "beta" means.
    --
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  5. mirror of TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    *rant about beryl still being beta*
    *rant about word-count in openoffice not working, no reasons given*
    *rant about feisty being the most buggy and overhyped release so far, based on the fact that the new network manager fails to work with his specific network card*

    seriously, does he get paid for this?

  6. Mod parent up! by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These "reviews" are stupid.

    #1. Review the distribution with hardware that WORKS WITH IT. You want to review the distribution, right? Not "does it work with Card XYZ123". I know, I know. Finding that hardware is too hard for you. You want to "review" it based upon whatever you have at hand right now. Whether it works or not.

    #2. If you want to review how it has problems with "Card XYZ123" then right your review about that card. That means you try that card with different distributions. Again, I know. You don't want to spend more time or effort than is absolutely necessary to get your "review" out.

    #3. If you're going to review hardware, review hardware. Which cards are supported? How well? Which are not? Why not? Of course we're not going to see many of these because it takes even more time and effort than the other two.

  7. Re:Could we have that in English please by Haeleth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Beryl, well, who cares? I mean, really? I don't think many linux geeks care about Beryl other than maybe to turn it on and say "wow, that's neat" and turn it back off.
    Don't conflate Beryl with the silly effects like wobbly windows and raindrops making your desktop splash and windows catching fire when you minimise them and so forth. Those are neat for a few minutes and then quickly turned off. But Beryl can bring things to the table that are of real value, and it's unwise to dismiss the whole think just because the parts that get exposure on YouTube are silly.

    For example, when I hover my mouse over an entry in my panel's window list, a live preview of that window pops up, so I can instantly tell (for example) whether a long compile process has finished without actually having to switch away from whatever I'm doing. Similarly, when I alt-tab to switch windows, what appears isn't just the icon for each application, it also includes an actual scaled-down representation of each window, so I can tell which picture each graphics editor window is editing far more easily than just going by filenames. The ability to zoom in smoothly on a window is very handy when trying to debug graphics output, and conversely if I want the big picture I can zoom out and see all my desktops at once. (Forget the cube, I'm talking straightforward tiling - but it's just as dependent on Beryl.)

    All this adds up to a desktop that's just slightly more pleasant to use than before. Plus whenever smug Mac weenies appear I can switch a few silly effects on and blow their minds with all the cool things "PeeCees" can do these days. Hey, it's a bonus.