If someone is interested, I managed to get desktop effects working on a nvidia box. (Athlon 64 3400+, Nforce 4 chipset, Geforce 7600 GS PCI-Express, running Fedora 7 Test 2 , x86) I installed latest kernel, kernel-devel & kernel-headers packages.(currently 2.6.20 2990), then reboot. Download the latest nvidia drivers and change the runlevel. As root : /sbin/init 3 Then log in the console and run as root the nvidia driver shellscript. After a little time of compilation, let nvidia modify the xorg.conf. Then open the /etc/X11/xorg.conf , check that the driver used is "nvidia", and not "nv". In the "Device" Section, add these lines (the first 3 lines are absolutely needed, the others are for my personnal use) Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Option "RenderAccel" "True" Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" Option "RandRRotation" "True" Option "TwinView" "True" Then delete the line "Load "glx" " in the "Module" section. This is the nvidia wizard which added it, but with this line, desktop effects couldn't be activated on my system. Xorg is now ready. But not the system. The driver install files in a bad path : /usr/X11R6/lib which is no more used by Xorg. As root, just copy /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/* in /usr/lib/xorg/modules And copy /usr/X11R6/lib/lib* in /usr/lib (Yes, this is crap) Run as root: /sbin/ldconfig It's done, reboot. If everything's ok, you should see the nvidia logo when Xorg launchs, and you will be able to activated Desktop Effects. I installed Beryl too. In order to use it, launch beryl-manager, and in the notification panel, select the Beryl/Emerald window manager. the best is to logout and login again in order to change,switch from one to the other is a little buggy(decorations don't appear totally); in compiz & beryl sometimes the windows doesn't open at a good position (window bar is hidden by the applet bar), but globally, it is very funny! If someone has advices or other configurations, I'd like to read them. Following my xorg.conf file : # Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "fr" Option "XkbVariant" "latin9" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nvidia" Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Option "RenderAccel" "True" Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" Option "RandRRotation" "True" Option "TwinView" "True" EndSection Section "Module" #Load "glx" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Videocard0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection