Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

Ever since I started a desktop with nothing but Beryl, I’ve become a bit addicted. It runs very cleanly without the interference of a huge desktop environment, and I could swear my refresh rates and overall responsiveness were better.

I added lxpanel as a way of triggering program menus (it’s tiny and easy to configure, with lots of plugins). I can fire up that, Emerald and Beryl via the .xinitrc file and nothing else gets in the way.

Add Iceweasel, urxvt, maybe PCManFM, and it’s altogether an excellent lightweight eye candy desktop.

Just about the only downside is that this poor little 1Ghz machine has to pretty much run full bore all the time, just to keep up. The fans don’t shut off very often. And my browser is kind of sluggish.

Ah well. It would be doing a lot worse under a full K/X/Ubuntu setup. And until I start missing Openbox, this will be fun.