Tech Trouble?: How to install 3D Desktop in Linux

3D Translucent Desktops are talk of the town ever since Windows Vista had released with these eye candies and visual effects. Nevertheless, it is a sad fact that Windows Vista can only give you these visual pleasures only on machines installed with high end graphic cards. Owners of entry level, hugely popular 3D graphic cards like Intel 865 chipset based on-board graphic cards can't dream to display Windows Vista Aero 3D graphics.

On the other hand, in Linux platform, you can have 3D and all kinds of Windows translucent visual desktop effects even on these entry level 3D graphic cards like on-board Intel 865 chipset. Here is how to install and enable 3D desktop in Linux.

There are various solutions - such as -Beryl, Compiz and Mettise. You can find many Linux distro with default Beryl support. SUSE has nice Mettise support in its certain version. But the most popular 3D desktop solution in Linux is Beryl. You need to install, configure and run Beryl in your Linux machine to get effects of 3D Desktop. you can install Beryl in your any Linux distribution in many ways, but it is recommended to install it through apt (Debian based installation) or yum (Redhat/Fedora based installation). For example, to install Beryl in Fedora, give following command -

#yum install beryl-gnome

To install Beryl in Gnome environment.

If you use KDE desktop environment, then the command will be-

#yum install beryl-kde

Make sure, you must be connected to high speed Internet. Beryl packages were about 7-8 MB download. After giving above commands, follow on screen instructions, and, after a while, all packages required to run Beryl will get installed.

Then, to start Beryl, the 3D Desktop, simply give following command:

# beryl-manager

Your 3D desktop will be up and running.

You can set animations, window behavior and hundreds of other visual effects of 3D desktop through Beryl Settings. To run Beryl settings, simply give following command:

#beryl-settings

A setting and configuration window will appear where you can tweak various parameters of your Linux 3D desktop.

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