A Working Beryl with older NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX400

Hi Adam,

I hope you can help me with my problem.

I have been switching in and out of Linux for about a year now after trying a few distros. Based on what i have experienced, I am only comfortable with either K/Ubuntu or Mepis. I want to stick with Linux (Mepis) but only if i can get the 3D working with my hardware.

I have seen a lot of you tube videos having the new Beryl 3D effects so I want to try and switch once again. If I can get Beryl to work, I will convert my XP partition into a virtual machine for my wife.

In the past 3 weeks, I attempted to install Mepis 6.5 but whenever I bood the CD, I get a blank screen after the mepis logo. I searched for a few posts and I fixed that by changing the xorg.conf to use vesa driver. So now i have installed Mepis and I can boot into Mepis as well.

The first thing I want to do is to get the 3D working. I followed your instructions but whenever I launch Beryl, I can see the red icon in the system tray but no 3D. In the menu I keep selecting to use Beryl as the window manager but it automatically goes back to the original WM.

I also have the same video card as you do, Geforce2 MX 400, but I can't get the 3D to work. Can you please describe in detail what I need to do to get the 3D working? I also want to use the exact version of Mepis that you are using to increase my chance of success with this.

I tried Mepis versions 6.0, 6.5 rc1 and 6.5 rc3 then followed your instruction but nothing works. Since the title of your post matches my problem perfectly, I thought I should post here so that others who have the Geforce2 MX400 can also benefit.

Thanks in advance.

I too have a Geforce 2 MX 400. Messing around with config files outside of the MEPIS tools often is not a good idea. You should do the following:

- boot up live CD, but DO NOT choose opt-in nvidia. This only works for newer cards. Press F3 in the GRUB menu to preset the desired resolution
- login, and fire up the MEPIS X windows assistant and reinstall Xorg
- reboot to the installed version, fire up MEPIS X windows assistant and install Nvidia LEGACY driver
- once done, reboot again and you're done

Keep in mind that Beryl is still experimental. It generally works OK, but it has its glitches. You probably have a card with 64 MB of memory. Known issue with nvidia is that, i you have many screens open, a new screen will be completely black. You will have to minimize all windows to get it back.

Let us know if this works for you.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Carlops you're the man!!!

I should have asked earlier. I followed your instructions and I now have 3D!!!

Although the 3D experience is not smooth (beryl benchmark is around 15-24 I think because the card only has 64MB) I don't really care as long as I have 3D working =)

I can now proceed with installing TVtime and vmware.

Thanks again! Mepis is great!

I will add that if your card is un-supported by the 9xxx driver - and the driver can detect the GPU being used - X will fail to start - in fact if the Nvidia installer detects an un-supported card - it too will fail. Also be aware that in order to run the Beryl packaged with Mepis 6.x - you need to use the Nvidia 9xxx series drivers (AIGLX + Xorg 7.x) - older drivers (pre 9xxx) will need XGL installed - a more difficult process...

Yeah, it is no speed breaker with that card. You can speed it up a bit by install nvclock and nvclock-gtk. It lets you overclock the GPU. Be careful not to go too high though, since it might burn out.... Use at your own risk.

In Beryl, you can speed things up by not using blur (slows down to almost crash) and not using 3d effects. Set texture to low and do not use mips.

Happy Berylling....

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Hi Carlops,

Everything went fine last night. But when I booted up my pc this morning, I noticed that the title bar disappeared =(

I thought maybe it's emerald's fault so I installed aquamarine and rebooted but I still don't have the title bar. I reloaded window manager and decorator but no luck.

The title bars appeared only when I selected back Kwin to be the window manager.

Please help how i can get it back. Thanks a lot! I really appreciate it.

Hi Calvin,

I have an MX440 working with Beryl, but it took a little experimenting. My system simply broke when I installed RC3 with nvidia legacy drivers. I finally resolved the issues by reinstalling nvidia-kernel-2-6-15-27.50.1mepis4, version 1.0.9755-1mepis.

I did this by running RC1 live and selecting Kmenu, system, Mepis, X-windows Assistant, Repair, then under "Copy Current XConfig" specify your destination disk or root partition. Don't visit the Nvidia seection in X-Windows Assistant, leave the setting at default and as Adam said, don't select Nvidia on boot up.

Reboot, go back to X-Windows Assistant and select nvidia legacy. Let it install and reboot.

You should now have a 3D capable install!

Everytime I upgrade I double check to ensure that I'm not upgrading the nvidia legacy driver.

Everything Adam says about the card's limitations is reflected in my system. I can run about 10 screens in Beryl before it blacks out a screen, but even before that the system sometimes protests by flashing black when I invoke another screen.

A couple of qualifications: I don't know the difference between the MX400 and 440 (both 64 Meg), you may be able to boot from RC2 with the same result.

Good luck.

check in /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you have screen colour depth 24. If not, edit file as root and restart X by pressing ctrl-alt-backspace.

If that doesn't help, see here: http://www.mepisguides.com/Mepis-6/nvidia-glx/dpkg-reconfigure/nvidia-dpkg.html

make a copy of xorg.conf first, should you mess it up.

If all else fails, visit the mepislovers.org forum and do a search there for 'beryl titlebars' and you'll surely find a solution.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Hi Nonutin,
Thanks for the help. What I have is RC3 and so far, I got the 3D running with the help of Carlops. the steps are basically the same as what you have outlined. I just had problems with the window decorations or title bars.

Hi Carlops,
I've been in that page but it did not help me. After a long time of searching, I finaly got the title bars back! ;o)

Based on what people said that worked for them, I think I can say that it's different for every hardware setup. But for me, what brought the title bars back is the setting Rendering Path which I changed to 'copy' ;o)

But just as I thought everything is perfect, I also experienced the black window. But the pattern is irregular. I sometimes get it even with only two windows open. ;o(
Right now I have 8 windows open and the black window appeared only on the 9th.

I don't know where's the problem (beryl or the video card driver) but it is understandable since Beryl is still in beta. I hope everything will be solved on the final version.

Thanks for all your help in making my Mepis experience a great one! See 'ya around!

Hey Calvin,

glad it works. The black window is basically a Nvidia driver bug. It has to do with he card's memory being full or not being used correctly. See this thread at mepislovers: http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5677&highlight=black+window+beryl

The 5th post or so talks of alleviating the bug by forcing AIGLX. Don't expect miracles, but every little bit helps...

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question