Hi, I've been trying for a day or so now to get some help with Beryl, both here and Beryl's forum. I haven't had anybody reply, so I'm thinking that there aren't a lot of people that are terribly experienced with it.

So I was needing to know if there was a fairly good setup guide, the Slackware's install on beryl-project.org crashed my system and I had to reinstall X from my install CD's.

Let me clarify that I am not mad that no one has responded to me. I just need to get this done, so I need to find a good guide so I can take care of it myself.

You have two threads about beryl that I know of, both replied to by people with a great deal of experience and expertise in the areas you have asked about. In each case you have received solid, worthwhile advise which, if followed, will solve the problems you have reported.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=551415
... the initial install thread, this has 17 replies. The gist is that you have not been running a recent enough version of X... you need X11R7 and you have had X11R6 and some mis-matched updates. Hence everything went pie-eyed. The very sound advice was to install slackware current.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=551435
... here, you solved your own initial question, but have failed to supply enough information about what went wrong. The information has been requested but you have yet to reply.

Considering your trouble - I would suggest you change distro to one which is more heavily managed. Sabayon runs beryl by default - no additional install steps, Ubuntu and similar have compiz pre-installed and beryl handy... ubuntu has an easy howto for beryl+nvidia on the easyubuntu wiki page. If you must have the slackware customisation/optimisation thing, try gentoo.

You are not going to get better support than you have received.

Right I'm very grateful for all the help I've gotten, I was running on about 2 hrs of sleep when I first wrote that, and I think what I was really looking for then was an online man page for beryl, which hopefully had a general guide.

If I were to switch distros, what all would be involved? Do I just download the images, burn them then install over Slack? The only times I've ever switched distros was after complete fallout, and I just formatted my partition because there wasn't anything of real value.

I love Slack, but it's starting to seem that they are using older, proven-to-be-stable versions, and that may be why I'm having such trouble.

I'm just going to go ahead and apologize for the original post. I think I really worded it badly. I wouldn't be able to do anything linux related if it weren't for people posting what they learned on site s like this. So really any help I get is worth so much more than nothing.

I am going to try when I get home to get upgraded to Slackware-current. From what I've been told, I screwed up on that, because I didn't download everything. I've never actually done an upgrade from an FTP site, so... yeah.

Thanks for the input,
David

P.S. When I wrote this originally, noone had replied to any of my posts, so I assumed that there weren't a lot of people that knew a great deal about this. So I just wanted to get a man page of sorts. I know, I'm kind of obsessing over the original post, I just REALLY do not want people to think that I take this site for granted. Couldn't be more false of a statement. OK, I'm shutting up now.

OK fairynuff ... the earliest reply was 7pm and you posted above at 6. You know, you normally need to wait at least a day for a reply. Some ofus are on the other side of the planet from you.

It will be easier for you to reinstall than upgrade from what you have.

Note: slackware is not using just the proven-to-be stable old stuff... you have chosen to use the ultra stable version. That's all. Probably a misunderstanding: unstable in linux dosn't have the same connotations that it does elsewhere. Beryl, for eg. is alpha code... so far, no problems.

I've suggested a distro change because the kinds of mistakes you've made suggest you have been having trouble understanding how things are supposed to fit together. Don't worry, you'll get there. While you're on the way, let someone give you a guided tour - ski the bunny-slope before you do the peak.

A distro change would involve a complete reinstall... download the iso and run the installer like before.

Ubuntu has the rep for being very easy to learn. However, it may be a tad too easy for someone used to slackware... suggest Sabayon: it is the beryl distro and is gentoo based, so it will have the compile-it-yourself feel you are used to.

But: If you are totally keen on slackware - good on yer -
read through the slackware faq and wiki and so on. Make sure you are completely current, get some practise compiling a kernel and configuring scripts etc. Slackware users are amongst the most knowledgeable around, so listen to them and follow their advise. Be prepared to wait... good advise takes time.

Above all... have fun.

lol usually I'm pretty good on waiting, but I got really tunneled visioned yesterday, so a couple hours felt like 3 days to me. I'll admit though, I was a little out of line.

I've read from a few places, I think even on the slack website, that Slack only puts versions they feel are stable enough, that's all I really meant by that.

I'm going to need this spelled out for me, when you say
You are referring to Slackware, and I should just reinstall it?

and when you say I'm going to need to back all my stuff up, then do it?
I would like to stick with Slackware, it's my first distro, always have loved it.

Thread closed because you already have others that deal with the same issue.