compiz-fusion is the result of merging some of beryls functionality with the compiz project. i'm not entirely certain that beryl is being abandoned, but it does seem that future efforts will be focussed on compiz-fusion. that's fine and dandy, and something to look forward to, but at the moment i personally choose beryl, since compiz-fusion has left out a couple specific features. hope is grim for these features to be introduced anytime soon, since i've seen the official thread where a developer questions the need to be able to snap to the top and bottom faces of the 3d cube.

wtf! o man this really pissed me off; let me explain: u have by default 4 virtual desktops, switching amongst them hides and shows the corresponding tasks initiated on that desktop. beryl and compiz-fusion let u wrap ur 4 desktops around a 3d cube, so when u change desktops ur manipulating this cube, rotating it in a 3d space. it's a very slick effect. additionaly, u can opt to put urself in side the cube, so instead of manipulating a cube, it's as if ur desktops are mapped to the 4 walls that surround u.

snapping to the top and bottom of the cube was probably introduced (in beryl) as a feature since u can map a picture to the top and bottom of the cube, such as a logo or something, u can flip ur cube to the top or bottom to hide all ur desktops and simply show the end cap. when ur inside the cube, this is a somewhat natural extension of what u'd expect to be able to do, since u can snap to any of the 4 walls that surround u, u'd expect to be able to do that up and down as well (on the ceiling and floor), yet compiz-fusion has specifically addressed this request with "i'm not sure what the point of snapping to the top or bottom face is since u can't use it as a desktop". ugh.

compiz-fusion will let you snap to the top face of a cube (not the bottom), however when ur inside the cube, the view is constrained to about 45 degrees up and down! ack! ok in all fairness i think it started off without that constraint, but it definitely did not snap to the top or bottom inside cube surface. i kinda think some combination of enabling and disabling settings resulted in the +/- 45 degree limitation, but i for the life of me can not release this.

my setup is such that when u initiate the 3d spacial (inside the) cube rotating effect the windows retreat a bit, and the desktop backgrounds fade away to reveal a skybox cloud panorama background, giving the effect of the windows floating out in a cloudy space; it really lends itself to creating atmosphere in a virtual workspace. anyway in beryl u can turn ur view up or down, and let it snap there; perhaps it's absolutely pointless, but i think it's fundamentally essential in establishing the surroundings.

compiz-fusion can zoom out when ur rotating the cube, but it can not have the walls zoom out when ur inside it. the sensation of having ur vertical view restricted to +/- 45 degrees; not being able to look at the sky or floor is one thing, but the combination of the claustrophobic feeling when the walls don't back up and give u some room to look around, is enuff for me to stick with beryl for the time being.

however, since my complaints about compiz-fusion may well be addressed by the time i next give it a shot, i wanted to get some notes down about setting it up, as i had to wade thru a boatload of outdated info before i figured out wassup.

installing compiz-fusion on fedora 8
it's really very simple, grab the compiz-fusion package from yum or yumex, and the fusion-icon packages; do note however that there are some fusion-icon dependencies that aren't picked up automatically, so make sure to get the 'fusion' related ones as well..

in the past with beryl, and this time around, with compiz-fusion, i messed extensively with the xorg.conf settings that relate to glx. let me make something clear about glx vs. aiglx; u might read a lot of references to peopl advocating glx over aiglx, but this is an outdated recommendation; in the past the nvidia drivers didn't support a particular instruction, and glx provided it. however the way i understand glx works, is that it adds another layer on top of the xwindo stuff, so it's less ideal than the aiglx approach which somehow doesn't add an extra layer, but cooperates better with the natural order of xwindows. this may not be entirely accurate, and ur welcome to seek out the finer points for urself, but it should be enuff that i'm telling you glx is unnecessary, and does indeed complicate the matter if u try that approach.

glx required a few extra options to be added to ur xorg.conf, and i was prepared to document them here, but aiglx does not, and therefore u ought not to need to edit the xorg.conf at all, if ur using the livna nvidia drivers. if u don't kno, the livna nvidia drivers are better than the official nvidia since it includes a tool that sync's ur xorg.conf, and other reasons that escape me atm.. this too may be an outdated understanding of things, but livna nvidia has worked for me in the past, and continues to do so without problems.

the one thing that did cause me a world of grief is which route to take in getting my dual-screen action going, with the floppy windows on both. before my experience with fedora 8, i had acknowledged the limitation with the non-cvs version of beryl which was that the effects could only be enabled on one screen. this is not the case with compiz-fusion, assuming you go with twinview instead of xinerama.

the details of what didn't work are beginning to escape me, but in short go with livna nvidia, aiglx, twinview (no xinerama), and u should be able to start up fusion-icon as simple as that. fusion-icon will check the current windo decorator, and switch to compiz-fusion if possible and appropriate. if nothing happens, try running fusion-icon from a terminal instead of the k-menu, as it will display any error messages. myne initially had issues creating several images or rendering something, but setting twinview and turning off xinerama ultimately did the trick.

again no xorg.conf manual editing is necessary since the livna drivers come with a utility that will set ur xorg.conf to use aiglx instead of glx (so disregard any mention of glx not being available, we're not trying to use it).

if compiz-fusion craps out, and ur windows lose their decorations, u can open the 'desktop effects' applet from the k-menu that will let re-specify k-win or whatever the default windo decorator is, which will reload it and give u ur decorations back.

to get fusion-icon to start at login, u symlink the program into ur kde/startup directory. something to the effect of "ln -s /usr/bin/fusion-icon ~/.kde/Startup/fusion-icon".

i guess i should also point out that when compiz-fusion is running, fusion-icon can switch to the emerald window decorator, which is a bit fancier than the default k-win, and has some really nice transparency and glassy glossy themes.

like i said it's actually really easy to get compiz-fusion, but i'm going back to beryl so i can stare at the floor; no joke.

update: beryl does seem dead, so i'll hafta head to the forums to get my shoe-gazing awn..