You can't find a better Ubuntu tutorial for installing Beryl than this one; it even comes with a video:
http://lhansen.blogspot.com/2006/10/...untu-edgy.html

Yes it's a very long process, but that doesn't mean it has to be hard.

Another method to install or try beryl is to grab a linux version that has beryl installed for you. Sabyon, MEPIS and some others all have beryl installed as soon as you pop the live cd in so you can check it out. Sabyon and MEPIS both can install the new nvidia driver while you try the live cd so that's a bonus too. You can see how it all works from the live cd environment. You can see which others come with beryl by scoping out distrowatch.

looks like i'll have to put mepis on my debian box here, it's obviously got high praise and not just from mepnoob - Fedora comes with beryl too and i like the idea of beryl on a live cd but that would depend on resources as live cd's and these sorts of environments are slow unless you have good hardware, another example would be LG3D live cd. it took nearly 10 minutes to get to the desktop and the OS was at it's knees, i couldn't even use the mouse but for 5 second spurts and i could not install it like that.
I tried beryll and its awesome, but since removing it i have decided to wait for the new offerings from The Compiz and Beryl communities reuniting.
till then this one is on hold for me