2026 note · Linux
Beryl, Feisty and a GeForce 6200
One year of Linux desktop posts from 2007, followed forward: Compiz Fusion, KDE 4, ShipIt and the end of hand-edited xorg.conf.
Read in order, the Linux posts on this blog work as a diary of one year on the desktop. Kubuntu Edgy in January 2007, a long fight to get Beryl's effects running, free CDs from Canonical in May, and Dell's Ubuntu machines a few weeks later. Most of what they describe has since been fixed, merged or retired, and following each thread forward is a short history of how the Linux desktop grew up.
Why Beryl mattered
Wobbly windows and the spinning desktop cube were showing off, and readers wanted them anyway. They were the thing to put in front of a Windows user. Beryl had split from Compiz in 2006. In spring 2007 the two projects agreed to merge again, and the result shipped as Compiz Fusion. Ubuntu 7.04 went out without effects switched on, which the February post grumbled about, but Ubuntu 7.10 turned them on by default that October.
The driver tax
The two longest tutorials on this site are about a single graphics card. Running a GeForce 6200 beside onboard Intel graphics meant BIOS changes, blacklisted kernel modules and hand edits to xorg.conf, written up first for Kubuntu Edgy and again for Feisty. Today Ubuntu offers the proprietary Nvidia driver from its Additional Drivers tool, and most users never open an xorg.conf at all.
KWin caught up
The June 2007 post on KWin's new compositing was looking at work in progress. KDE 4.0 arrived in January 2008 with desktop effects built into its own window manager, and KWin has handled them ever since. GNOME and KDE now both default to Wayland sessions, where the compositor is the display server rather than something layered on top of it.
Free CDs and a front page
Canonical's ShipIt service, which delivered a box of Feisty discs here after four weeks, mailed free Ubuntu CDs around the world until 2011. Dell's decision to sell Ubuntu PCs, celebrated in May, put Linux on a major PC maker's store front. Wubi, the Windows-based installer covered the same month, later shipped on the official Ubuntu CD from version 8.04.
One number from the time survives on this site. When the blog asked readers which desktop they used, GNOME took 53% of 30 votes and KDE 27%, with 13% admitting they were on Windows.