Looking to run Beryl.

Well as the topic says, I want to use Beryl. I completely fell in love with it's graphical effects the moment I saw, but I have no clue what distro goes best with it. Let me warn you that I am a complete noob with Linux. The most I've done with it is use it as the OS for my DMZ. I've heard Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is good. Will it be a good mix?

By the way, I will be getting Asus G1S.

 

I have run Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and Beryl together and they run fantastically with my integrated graphics.

 

Okay, so the G1S uses nVidia graphics, GOOD. There's good support for nVidia cards in Linux, if it had ATi, I would've told you to reconsider if you want to run Linux, but, you're golden!

Running Beryl on Ubuntu will work just fine, and there's a lot of support for it there, and plenty of people running with that setup to help you out.

Another distro to consider is Sabayon, it was (is?) considered the Beryl posterboy distro.

With that said, I've never used Sabayon, though i have run Gentoo in the past (which Sabayon is based on). Sabayon is supposed to be more beginner friendly than Gentoo is, but I still wonder if it's a good choice for a first distro.

On the other hand, I generally recommend Ubuntu for anyone who's looking into getting into Linux. It has a reputation as a beginner distro, because it really is much easier to get into than some other distros (like Gentoo), however, I also know many Linux veterans who use Ubuntu as well, so in spite of its beginner stigma, it is very suitable for expert users as well.

So, my recommendation, try Ubuntu, learn the basics, and once you've used it enough to know whether it actually fits your needs or not, then start looking at distros again (or if Ubuntu meets all your needs, then don't).

 

Yup you'll be ok with your Nvidia graphics, just make sure you enable the driver after install of Ubuntu (I assume that what you will install).

 

No problem with Ubuntu (or just Debian itself, for that matter). Beryl is already there after you install Ubuntu itself, ready to be enabled (as long as you don't have an ATI graphics card). As for Ubuntu being a "beginner" distro, that's a bunch of hooey. It installs easily, and it's ready to use as it is, but it's Linux, and so you can very much do things the hard way if you insist on it (rarely necessary though). There's nothing about Linux you can't do once you have Ubuntu running. The advantage is that you do have it running and almost completely configured for your hardware from the get go. Ubuntu is like having Windows plus a very powerful DOS at the same time. You can do things in the raw DOS, or in the very complete Windows-like environment.

In the Linux world, you can choose a distro like Ubuntu which has much work already done for you, or you can choose the original, more fundamental distro it's based on. In Ubuntu's case, that's Debian. If you install Debian (which is not really any harder to do), you don't get as many things working right after installation. For example, install Ubuntu on a laptop and when it boots, the CPU will already be working at fast and slower speeds as it does in Windows. Install Debian, and your CPU will be working only at full power until you install the software needed to make it work at variable speed. This is the kind of thing a distro like Ubuntu does for you.

 

I've tried the latest Sabayon liveDVD (version 3.4) and I really like the cool bootup music! And that it comes with Compiz Fusion already working on the LiveDVD! But, once I installed it, I couldn't figure out why my wireless wasn't working. And having already identified with ubuntu for just over three weeks, I was completely lost in Sabayon. So I reinstalled ubuntu feisty

Although I must say, the new sabayon comes with some cool games! Hahaha

So for a new linux user, I'd definitely recommend Ubuntu. Personally, Kubuntu didn't work as well for me. And I've also tried LinuxMint Cassandra; that one's based on ubuntu, and looks a little better I think. But I didn't figure out how to get certain language support, and customizing the boot screen didn't work; so I switched back to Ubuntu. I've also heard people saying SimplyMepis is good too, but I've never tried that.