At lebabyg, here what sandra pulled up not sure if this will help:

At echat, in the first output from beryl i got this

So i guess that might be the problem but then again its integrated graphics on a cheap laptop so it could be this as well at the bottom of the sandra printout it warned me to use an external graphics card which was comforting!

How do i go about doing what do said above?

The vesa driver is a default "works with anything" driver that is provided with xorg. It doesn't include any OpenGL stuff and without it you won't get beryl running. You need to find a driver that supports OpenGL and works with your laptop video chip.

Try here to get started with your chip: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

Even if you aren't running ubuntu, this should give you some good leads.

Also look here: http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...0&SubCatID=101

Be advised that when I was googling this I ran across a reference that claims that via has stripped the OpenGL stuff from their driver and so you need to use the OpenChrome driver referenced in the first link (follow links on the ubuntu page to the OpenChrome homepage to read what I read). I don't know the truth or the details because I don't have that chipset in any of my machines, but just be aware of the possibility.

I just saw this post. Looks like you have a config problem with OpenChrome and xorg. You are going to need to use OpenChrome, not vesa, if you want beryl.

Apparently OpenChrome works; you'll just need to get the config straightened out.

I have had problems with white screens when I have tried to use xgl. I get adequate performance with aiglx, and I get my best performance with the nvidia rendering engine. Too bad the nvidia engine is too buggy, so I use aiglx.

I suggest you try to get OpenChrome working with a more basic system (just X with some window manager such as gdm or kdm) then when that works get beryl going. Beryl is immature; you'll have some issues. It is very cool and when it grows up it'll be the best but until then you'll be doing a bit of fiddling.

I agree with jiml8. Your only option if you want beryl and opengl is to compile the Openchrome driver from source. What I would suggest is making a copy of your (working) xorg file. so do cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /home/USERNAME/xorg.conf.backup. This means that if you have any problems with using the new openchrome driver (i.e. it bumps you back to the command line) then you can copy your backup file (sudo cp /home/USERNAME/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf). Then you can try again to configure the Openchrome driver.

However, when you said you got a "White screen" was this from boot, or only when Mint started X? If it's from boot then you've got very serious problems, if only when X gets started then you should be ok after some fiddling!!

Linux is an amzingly steep learning curve asinity and can be a total pain in the backside to get going. Stick with it though

You might just have to live with the fact that you can't have beryl and opengl programs on your laptop though. Integrated graphics cards are notoriously unsupported in linux!! Good luck

Thanks for the replies much appreciated I'm going to give openchrome a go I've already looked at some of the stuff to do with this when I was trying to install linux and gave up because it looked too involved for some who had never used linux before.

Since I've been using linux now for the better part of two months i think its time to branch out and maybe break linux a couple of times! Ill be using the ubuntu pages and hope they work for my distro which i think they should.

I'll keep you posted on my progress but tell me is beryl/compiz really worth this pain??

The openchrome driver isn't just for compiz and beryl, it means that you can also play opengl games/programmes. I run Counterstrike 1.6 and Unreal tournament in wine so it means that I have finally done away with windows, and google-earth has a native linux version which is also good.

In terms of compiz and beryl I would definitely say it is worth it, some of the features such as the cube are superb as are the extra window decorations that emerald brings you. However these effects come at a cost in terms of CPU and performance and unless you have a decentish laptop running certainly KDE and beryl will mean slowing down of programmes.

Have a look at these screenshots of Kubuntu and beryl, looks pretty swish and i personally think that it definitely is worth it!!
http://www.ludreb.plus.com/Ubuntupictures.html

beryl is very, very cool. It is immature and even when you get it running, you'll encounter some issues. But it is really very cool. Blows Vista out of the water - and I say that not to bash Microsoft, but because it really isn't even close.