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X eyecandy (pt.2)
an overview of window managers and eyecandy
are the latest and greatest in high fashion linux - see the video above to enjoy the true power of beryl. xgl is an X server that leverages the acceleration of openGL to allow you to do all sorts of cool things, like rubbery wobbly windows, expose like functions, translucent video, 3D desktop switching and a whole lot of other things that haven't been invented yet. Compiz was written inside Novell, and released to the world. The developers have created a plugin interface, so that compiz can be extended, and new ideas easily implemented. A bunch of developers took the code and ran with it. However, recently they forked the Compiz project, and launched Beryl. Beryl has a faster development cycle than straight Compiz, and includes a lot of experimental/interesting plugins. Even though Beryl is more bleeding edge than straight Compiz, I've been using Beryl since its launch, and it seems very stable - I've even switched so svn, and this seems pretty damn stable too. I've had no X crashes, and I use it full time on my desktop and laptop.
xgl, aiglx, beryl and compiz
XGL
one of the great things about xgl is that it works well on a wider range of hardware than just straight composite. It seems to work on both nVidia and ATI (both require their respective proprietary drivers), and intel integrated chips.
For a full list of supported hardware, check here.
AIGLX
AIGLX is another accelerated X implementation. It is now built into xorg v7.1. XGL runs on top of a standard X server, whereas AIGLX is its own X server. AIGLX hasn't been as popular up until recently, because neither the nvidia nor the ATI binary drivers have supported it. However, the new 9 series of the nvidia drivers now support the extensions needed to run AIGLX - yay! However, more importantly, AIGLX works really well on integrated intel graphics chipsets.
I've used both XGL and AIGLX on my nvidia based desktop machine, and it works muuuuch better on AIGLX, even using nvidia's beta driver. Playing video on XGL was slow and dodgy, and resulted in slow/jittery/out of sync video. On AIGLX, cpu usage playing video is as I would expect on an unaccelerated X server.
The other advantage of AIGLX is that it works great on intel integrated graphics chips. I've got a laptop with the intel 945 graphics chip, and AIGLX works great. It feels as smooth and fast as the nvidia chip on the desktop and video plays smooth.
installation
This is not supposed to be a howto on installing xgl, aiglx, beryl or compiz. This is best left to the experts. However, there will be some great resources for your distribution on the various support forums/wiki's that they provide. I know there are some great howtos for gentoo and ubuntu. However, the best place to look for howtos is on the Beryl forums.
random thoughts
although xgl, aiglx, beryl and compiz targeted the gnome desktop, it works equally well on kde.
should you use xgl, aiglx, beryl and/or compiz on a production system? That's up to you really. Stability seems to be pretty good as of now. Performance also seems to be pretty good. There are some slowdowns when playing video on xgl, but that doesn't seem to be too bad. However, bear in mind that this is released as alpha software, and shouldn't be relied on for important stuff. Having said that, X has not crashed since I've been using it.
get the latest version of kxdocker to use with xgl, aiglx, beryl and/or compiz. Stefano the developer has updated it so that it is composite friendly. It now supports proper translucency, and works really fast. It's now better than the Mac OSX dock. It looks as good, and has much more functionality. Get it, it's worth it.
See here for an article about non-accelerated window manager eyecandy.
You can discuss this howto on the forums.