The Composite Manager Guide: How to Get Vista-ish Effects in (K)(X)Ubuntu.

[poofyhairguy]

The Composite Manager Guide: How to Get Vista-ish Effects in (K)(X)Ubuntu.

HUGE UPDATE -December 23, 2005

You MUST get the new Nvidia drivers people. With the newest drivers, I HAVE STABLE COMPOSITE!!!!!!

The logout bug is gone. The artifacts are gone. Its all gone. 2005 ends and I get what I want- a modern desktop!

Introduction

Do you like drop shadows? Do you want a faster feeling desktop? Have you seen screen shot of Vista and wished Ubuntu could do the same? Then you might want a Composite Manager.

It adds these effects that users would want:

1.Drop Shadows -OSX style. Almost all fast computers can do this.
2.What I call “the fading trick”- as windows are minimized they fade into the windows behind them or the desktop. Needs an Nvidia card. Vista does this. (note: the XFCE Composite Manager does not do this)
3.Windows that are more responsive to commands. At 100% CPU use I can still move windows with no ugly trails or jerkiness.
4.Transparent windows

These effects can not be given justice in a screenshot....so here is a video

http://linux.jannol.com/ubuntu/demos/demo-1.mpg

That Jannol provided. Thanks.

Who can use a Composite Manager? I hate to say it, but only people with Nvidia cards, an ATI 9250 card (or lower) and Dapper, or a fast enough computer.

PEOPLE WITHOUT SUPPORTED CARDS: You are not left out if your machine is fast enough. I do not know what fast enough is. Read my guide and be sure that you do the steps that are in bold and you use the command I suggest.

What do you need to use a Composite Manager?

1.Nvidia Card, a supported ATI card (a 92xx model or lower) or a fast CPU (just for drop shadows)
2.Time
3.The official Nvidia drivers installed if you have Nvidia card
4.Universe repo is accessible
5.Internet Connection

****DISCLAIMER******

Composite Managers as they are now are a toy. I can promise that if you use one, it will crash on you. It will. One day it will crash your xserver and take everything you are doing with it. I will talk about ways to deal with that in the guide, but I can promise it will happen. Xcompmgr is an ACTIVE project with a new release recently. Please don't ask if Ubuntu or its developers can provide better support and don't hope for it to get better magically the next release or something (unless you use XFCE or KDE). The Linux desktop is going in a different direction than this. This is a “band aid” to get there. I tolerate its quicks and live with it maybe you can too. Now on to the guide.

***********************

Steps to Use a Composite Manager

FIRST PART

Open a normal terminal (applications, accessories, terminal) and put this in the terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

USERS WITH UNSUPPORTED CARDS MUST DO THIS STEP TOO

A file will come up. Add these lines to the end of the file:


Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

For Nvidia Cards:

FIRST INSTALL NEWEST DRIVERS!!!!! Directions here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75074

Now look through the file. Find the part called “device.” Add these two lines to that section:

Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"


Make it look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA Card"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

For Supported ATI Cards (ATI 9250's and below) in Dapper (as soon as Dapper gets Xorg 7):

Make it look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Graphics Card"
Driver "radeon"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Option "DDCMode"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "SubPixelOrder" "NONE"
Option "ColorTiling" "false"
EndSection

Save the file. The hardest part is done. If it does not restart type the command “startx “ Save all the work you are doing, and restart the xserver by pressing the CTRL, ALT, and Backspace keys at the same time. I put these two sentences backwards for a reason.

SECOND PART

If you use KDE or XFCE you can stop now. For XFCE just log in and its native composite manager will now work by default ( I find this one crashes less than xcompmgr) and for KDE go to

System Settings -> Desktop -> Window Behavior->Transparency

To configure KDE's built in composite manager. But be warned, just like Xcompmgr, both the XFCE and KDE Composite Managers have crashed on me. You are still a very early adopter.

If you are a gnome user, then log back into Gnome.

For Gnome we have to use Xcompmgr to get the effects.

USERS WITH UNSUPPORTED CARDS MUST DO THIS STEP TOO

Open a terminal and put this in:

sudo apt-get install xcompmgr transset

Tell apt-get yes if it askes something and wait till its done.

Here are the commands for xcompgr:

-d display Specifies which display should be managed.
-r radius Specifies the blur radius for client-side shadows. (default 12)
-o opacity Specifies the translucency for client-side shadows. (default .75)
-l left-offset Specifies the left offset for client-side shadows. (default -15)
-t top-offset Specifies the top offset for clinet-side shadows. (default -15)
-I fade-in-step Specifies the opacity change between steps while fading in. (default 0.028 )
-O fade-out-step Specifies the opacity change between steps while fading out. (default 0.03)
-D fade-delta-time Specifies the time between steps in a fade in milliseconds. (default 10)
-a Use automatic server-side compositing. Faster, but no special effects.
-c Draw client-side shadows with fuzzy edges.
-C Avoid drawing shadows on dock/panel windows.
-f Fade windows in/out when opening/closing.
-F Fade windows during opacity changes.
-n Normal client-side compositing with transparency support
-s Draw server-side shadows with sharp edges.
-S Enable synchronous operation (for debugging).

Yeah it hurts my brain too. So if I as was you, I would stick to only a few simple commands.

the command:

xcompmgr -cC & killall gnome-panel

will give you drop shadows and window acceleration. The command:

xcompmgr -fF & killall gnome-panel

Will give you the fading trick and window acceleration.

The command:

xcompmgr -cCfF & killall gnome-panel

Will give you both. The command:

xcompmgr -a & killall gnome-panel

will just give you the window acceleration without the two tricks. This command is the most stable one by far. Its worth it to try it even if you don't like drop shadows and fading just to feel what an nice accelerated desktop feels like.

Advanced Commands I use (you should try them too- recommended):

xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6

That one just does fading in a fashion thats much better than the default.

xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6 -cC -t-5 -l-6 -r5

That one does fading in the best way and has drop shadows that look much better overall- especially with drop down lists such as the Applications menu. This could be called "The Perfect Setting." (I know its not for everyone)

BEST SETTING FOR PEOPLE WITH NON SUPPORTED CARDS

xcompmgr -cC -t-3 -l-5 -r5

That setting gives sane drop shadows that work well with the Gnome menu's. It should be possible to use this command by itself if you add the composite lines to your xorg and you computer is fast enough (who knows what fast enough is- just try). This is where xcompmgr is useful for most people.

But try what you can try and if it crashes just restart the xserver and don't use that command again. If you want to stop xcompmgr, hit CTRL and the C key at the same time.

If you want xcompgr to start when Gnome starts, the go to “System, Preferences, Sessions.” Click the last tab called “Startup Programs.” Click “Add.” Type in what command you liked best or worked best for you. Then for order pick “41” Then click “close,” log out and log back in.

This part (actually most of this guide) I credit to arnoct:

Using Transset for transparent windows in Gnome:

This is just an extra little command. If you want to set certain windows as transparent, then run the command "transset" in the console. Your mouse will turn into a crosshair; simply click on the window you want to set as transparent. The transparency value can be anywhere from 0 (completely transparent) to 1 (opaque.) It defaults to .75, and back to 1 if the window is already transparent.

For example, if you want to make a window half-transparent:


transset 0.5


Tricks To Deal With Composite Manager Bugs.

After prolonged use of xcompmgr, I have come across many bugs that can be quite annoying. To get around these, here are some tricks I have found.

**Most Important Trick and why I use Gnome and xcompmgr over any of the others**

As I said before, all the Composite Manager's crash. One advantage of xcompmgr is with this script you can turn it off and on easily. Credit for this goes to frodon.

Put this command in the terminal:

gedit toggle_xcompmgr.bash

Copy this into the empty file:

#!/bin/bash
a=`ps -aef | grep -i xcompmgr | awk ' {if ($8 == "xcompmgr"){printf "2"}} '`
if [[ $a = "" ]]
then
yourcommand &
killall gnome-panel
else
kill -9 `ps -aef | grep -i xcomp | awk ' {if ($8 == "xcompmgr"){printf $2}} '`
killall gnome-panel
fi

See The part I bolded? Thats where you need to put the xcompmgr command that works best for you. Here is a good default one:

#!/bin/bash
a=`ps -aef | grep -i xcompmgr | awk ' {if ($8 == "xcompmgr"){printf "2"}} '`
if [[ $a = "" ]]
then
xcompmgr -fFcC &
killall gnome-panel
else
kill -9 `ps -aef | grep -i xcomp | awk ' {if ($8 == "xcompmgr"){printf $2}} '`
killall gnome-panel
fi

Now save the file to your home folder. Close gedit. Put this command in the terminal:

sudo mv toggle_xcompmgr.bash /usr/bin/

then this command:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/toggle_xcompmgr.bash

Then right click on gnome panel and add a shortcut, choose custom shortcut in the menu and add

/usr/bin/toggle_xcompmgr.bash

in the command field. You can make a desktop launcher by right clicking on the desktop, choosing “create launcher” then use the same command.

Now each time you click on the icon xcompmgr is toggled on/off! This is essential and its the only way around many bugs.

First Bug: Media Players Crash or Have Artifacts When in Full Screen Mode

The solution to this problem was gvien to us in the new release of Breezy, and is enough to warrant praise as the was the most annoying bug before Breezy.

Totem-xine was upgraded in Breezy a lot. Its way better to use and IT IS VERY STABLE WITH XCOMPMGR! Sorry I screamed but it makes me happy. Full screen, no problem. Any type of file, no crashes. So just use totem-xine for all video files. All the audio players I tried work already, but only Breezy Totem-xine works for video everytime. The second best by far the is VLC, and then all others trail by a lot- even other xine's like xine-ui, gxine, or kaffine. Don't use them.

Second Bug: When you try to logout in Gnome, it seems to crash!

THIS BUG IS GONE WITH NEWEST DRIVERS AND NVIDIA CARDS!!!!! DANCING IN THE STREETS!!!!!

Third Bug: Games don't work or are slow

Turn off xcompmgr for all opengl games.

Fourth Bug: Open GL screen savers crash my computer!

This is a bad one. Only way around it is to use a screensaver that does not use opengl. Luckily Ubuntu comes with many, unfortunately they are not the default. To fix this, turn off xcompgr, and go to “System, Preferences, Screen Saver” Choose the blank screen option, or pick a screensaver that looks SO old school (like Windows 95 old school) that you know it does not use opengl.

Fifth Bug: Xcompmgr crashes when using Firefox

Easy solution is to use Epiphany. It crashes way less. Like it might end crashing almost completely for you. And when you install its pluggins it has an automatic session saver. But we all can't do that. For those like me who are Firefox addicts, use this extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=436

Sixth Bug: Xcompmgr Crashing when you are doing important things.

This is one area where Breezy is a lot better as well.

The problem is that xcompmgr crashes. I can go weeks without seeing one, then boom one will hit one day. Its annoying if you are typing a big rant in Firefox or on GAIM, or whatever else you are doing.

Best way around this it to use the first trick to just turn xcompmgr off when you are doing important things. It can turn on and off without crashing things, so even if you remember half way through a email or project click that icon and turn it off!

Another thing is to do all writing beyond a few lines in OpenOffice.org2 writer. It has GREAT crash recovery “skills” and does a wonderful job of getting you right back where you are if any of the composite managers act up.

Seventh Bug: Problems with Flash in Firefox

Credit goes to varunus for this one.

First, open up your firefox launcher file with the following:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/firefox

Find the part that looks like this:
##
## Variables
##
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"

Add a line, making it look like this:
##
## Variables
##
##Added for composite extension to work
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"


Flash will no longer have any issues. This makes firefox ignore the extra alpha channel that xcompmgr gives it for color. Because the application itself doesn't do anything with the alpha channel, all of the effects still work, and flash will no longer complain.


Eighth Bug: You get addicted to using xcompmgr and can't go back

I still have not found a solution for this one!

Well I wish you luck in your hunt for eye candy and I hope it goes well. In the future new technologies will come about to further modernize the Linux desktop. Till then the Composite Managers allow us to live on the edge and have the future today. If you have and suggestions, please make them!

New additions:

I have included my xorg.conf file, because at one point I discovered the magic that allowed me to use xcompmgr with two screens and I want to share it!

Also I have included the newest xcompmgr that I personally compiled. All you (should) have to do in untar the file into....say your home folder...and the use the "cd" command to get into the fold made then use all of the xcompmgr commands as I indicated above.

HUGE EDIT!!!!!!

Ok, I have a GUI for you xcompmgr fans. Download the deb file I attached to this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=555510&postcount=170

to your home folder and extract the deb file there (forum won't let me attach a deb file). First use apt-get to get the dependancies you need:

sudo apt-get install libgtkmm-2.4-1c2

Then install the deb file in the terminal with this command:

sudo dpkg -i gcompmgr_0.21-2_i386.deb

To use it, run the command:

gcompmgr

I hope you enjoy, it makes messing with Xcompmgr more fun!

[Quartus]

And I don't have an Nvidia card... :(

[kdavison007]

Why do you have to have an Nvidia card?

[poofyhairguy]

Why do you have to have an Nvidia card?

You don't HAVE to have an Nvidia card to try it out, but only Nvidia cards and their official drivers accerate the current set of composite managers.

Without an Nvidia card, your CPU will do all the work. That will work for maybe the drop shadows, but the fading and the rest would kill a not super fast system.

[Paulus]

Thanks poofhairyguy, that is probably the best how-to I have ever read- I particuarly enjoyed the "bug's" section- a part i didn't expect. Though as previously pointed out there is nothing regarding ati cards- perhaps a mention in the title would be niiice.:rolleyes: EDIT: You have :)

Thanks again!


btw xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6
rocks!

[tommy04]

Well, I tried "xcompmgr -cCfF & killall gnome-panel", and it was really pretty, until you get to the part where X froze up and I couldn't even CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE out of it :/

Any ideas why that's happening? Firefox was running at the time... I don't want to try it again because i'm worried it might mess up the hard drive next time I have to hard reboot...

[poofyhairguy]

Thanks poofhairyguy, that is probably the best how-to I have ever read- I particuarly enjoyed the "bug's" section- a part i didn't expect. Though as previously pointed out there is nothing regarding ati cards- perhaps a mention in the title would be niiice.:rolleyes:

Thanks again!


btw rocks!

Cool. I edited it a little to add a section about what happens without a Nvidia card, but I'll do it more so. I'm glad you like that setting, it took forever for me to get it. I'm glad you enjoyed the guide, I tried my best!

[deception]

Great job! Just would like to add if anyone experiences the "overlapping of the gnome-panel by applications".. just type "killall gnome-panel" in a terminal :KS


Thanks poofyhairguy :D

[rosslaird]

In breezy, using the latest kde and a somewhat older nvidia card, kde crashes my whole system when I have the composite extension and rendering effects enabled in the kde control module. Since kde simply fails to load after the changes to xorg.conf and kde window settings, this presents an issue: how to turn off the composite effects in kde if kde will not start? The workaround, which I eventually discovered, is to run another window manager (like xfce) and run kcontrol from within it. The kde composite settings can then be changed back.

Xfce, by the way, works great with the composite effects.

Ross

[scourge]

Either buy a new card if you want this, or if you can't email your hardware maker and ask them for better Linux support!

Better Linux support is always good, but it's not the same thing as support for xcompmgr. I read that ATI's stance is something like: "If the X.org developers don't think Composite is worthy of support, why should we think it is?". I think it makes sense.

[poofyhairguy]

Better Linux support is always good, but it's not the same thing as support for xcompmgr.

True. Xcompmgr is a dead end. But better Linux support will hopefully allows ATI users to not get left out of next big eye candy upgrade.


I read that ATI's stance is something like: "If the X.org developers don't think Composite is worthy of support, why should we think it is?". I think it makes sense.

Buying an Nvidia card to get the effect I want makes sense to me. ATI's excuses never make sense to me.

Maybe if ATI drivers where great and this was the one thing holding them back.....but thats not the case.

[ssam]

it just about works for me on a 64 mb Radeon Mobility 9000 with the opensource drive, on a powerbook g4 1ghz. but i get funky yellow colours and a couple of games can crash the xserver (whether xcompmgr is running or not).

xorg 7 should make things work better

[scourge]

Buying an Nvidia card to get the effect I want makes sense to me. ATI's excuses never make sense to me.

Considering that the Composite extension is buggy even on systems with an nVidia card I'd say you're in a small minority here. Most people just want better OpenGL support, so that's where ATI's focus should be. I also switched to nVidia about 9 months ago, but I still read the boards at Rage3D.com, and from what I've read it seems that ATI is making progress.

[poofyhairguy]

Considering that the Composite extension is buggy even on systems with an nVidia card I'd say you're in a small minority here.

Its a nice minority to be in.


Most people just want better OpenGL support, so that's where ATI's focus should be. I also switched to nVidia about 9 months ago, but I still read the boards at Rage3D.com, and from what I've read it seems that ATI is making progress.

If ATI supports all the tricks that are comming with Xorg 7.0 then I'll be happy for sure. Till then I'll survive with xcompmgr.

[scourge]

Its a nice minority to be in.

I kind of agree here. GPU accelerated desktop is definitely the way to go. I've experimented with xcompmgr quite a lot myself and I think it has great potential. If it was stable it would be a good reason to switch to Nvidia.


If ATI supports all the tricks that are comming with Xorg 7.0 then I'll be happy for sure.

I wouldn't hold my breath. ATI's Linux development team has very limited resources (proportional to Linux's market share) and they're still struggling with basic OpenGL compatibility. When they accomplish that goal they can focus on performance. And then, X.org tricks. At least that's what I think their plan is.

[flibble]

Hi :)

Well, I've been reading about xcompmgr for a few weeks, how it's buggy and a deadend and I've been thinking, "Sounds like a waste of time". Then I tried it. It's beautiful. Really... beautiful... I had to smurk at myself, repeatedly hitting ctrl+alt+D, sending multiple windows fading in and out, rolling my mouse along the firefox bookmarks toolbar, menus gliding their shadows into one another. Lol. Xmas in X land. Thanks for a great howto phg.

[poofyhairguy]

Hi :)

Well, I've been reading about xcompmgr for a few weeks, how it's buggy and a deadend and I've been thinking, "Sounds like a waste of time". Then I tried it. It's beautiful. Really... beautiful... I had to smurk at myself, repeatedly hitting ctrl+alt+D, sending multiple windows fading in and out, rolling my mouse along the firefox bookmarks toolbar, menus gliding their shadows into one another. Lol. Xmas in X land. Thanks for a great howto phg.


No problem. Ever since Breezy made Xcompmgr tolerable to use (by almost never crashing it) I have been hooked myself.

[norwyn]

Hi folks, and thank you poofyhairguy for a very nice guide!
I'm using XFCE and I wonder what the command is to disable the shadow effects, or I think it is the shadow effects that I want to disable.

Problem:
When I'm changing the windows seize everythings freeze. That is the function i want to disable ;). I know that I should expect it to crash often, but everything else work close to perfect.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for my poor english.

[poofyhairguy]

Hi folks, and thank you poofyhairguy for a very nice guide!
I'm using XFCE and I wonder what the command is to disable the shadow effects, or I think it is the shadow effects that I want to disable.

Problem:
When I'm changing the windows seize everythings freeze. That is the function i want to disable ;). I know that I should expect it to crash often, but everything else work close to perfect.


Thats just how the XFCE composite manager works. I don't think you can control its functions, and it crashes a lot me. Personally, I wouldn't advise anyone to use XFCE's composite manager, but if you want to please know that such crashes are part of its program.

[william_nbg]

First off - thanks for the how to, it written really clear and detailed.

Would really like to try this, but have one question.

When you said I would need the official nvidia drivers do you mean the ones found int the repositories, or the one from the nvidia web site??

sorry for the noob question, but just want to be sure.

[poofyhairguy]

First off - thanks for the how to, it written really clear and detailed.

Would really like to try this, but have one question.

When you said I would need the official nvidia drivers do you mean the ones found int the repositories, or the one from the nvidia web site??

sorry for the noob question, but just want to be sure.

Both will work. I use the repo ones. I know people that do it with the newer ones installed by hand. You just need some Nvidia drivers installed.

[phend-one]

This is REALLY nice!

Thanks for sharing this!

*hugs old GeForce 4200Ti* And they told me you were useless! :cool:

[ba5e]

What a great How-to.

It works great on my pIII 733 w/nvidia FX5200.

[poofyhairguy]

What a great How-to.

It works great on my pIII 733 w/nvidia FX5200.


Works great with old machines.

[ad0]

Can someone put some screenshots to see how that looks?

[hesee]

Works great with old machines.

Any hope to get this working with my old Geforce2 mx400? processor is AMD 2600+ XP...

[Neo40]

Any hope to get this working with my old Geforce2 mx400? processor is AMD 2600+ XP...


I have a GeForce2 mx400 and it works fine. However, I find drop shadows a little bit slow. Is it my card? I don't know...

[xingmu]

The HOWTO is excellent, had no problems following it. But the results were disappointing to me. The "shadows" are really just a fuzzy gradient border around every window, panel, and menu. I wouldn't really call it a shadow because it doesn't follow basic principles of physics (i.e. the shadow is on all four sides of a window??). It was also a little overkill to have a shadow on my already semi-transparent side panel and my auto-hide mini panel.

The fade in and fade out was not bad...but it made GNOME seem a lot slower and clunkier (quite the opposite of being more responsive). I notice the problem a lot when Alt-Tabbing between windows (which is how I switch windows all the time).

BTW, this was all on a Toshiba Tecra M2 with a GeForce FX Go 5200....cpu is...I forget...Pentium 1.6Ghz plus or minus some.

Anyways, my big question is what the original poster meant by saying that xorg is moving in a different direction than composite. What direction? What will be seeing for eye candy in the future?

Some screenshots:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b179/xingmu/th_Screenshot-1.png (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b179/xingmu/Screenshot-1.png)

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b179/xingmu/th_Screenshot.png (http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b179/xingmu/Screenshot.png)

[poofyhairguy]

I have a GeForce2 mx400 and it works fine. However, I find drop shadows a little bit slow. Is it my card? I don't know...


Yeah, older Nvidia cards have problems with shadows.

[JazzCrazed]

Just FYI... Things seem to work well on my Acer Aspire 3002LCi using an SiS Mirage chip! I don't know whether that's accelerating it, or whether my Sempron 2800+ is powerful enough to do it on its own (I know that driver support for SiS Mirage is lacking). Shadows run really fast, though, and the window acceleration is pleasurably noticeable. Fades are too sluggish to use, though.

Also, sometimes when I started up xcompmgr with the appropriate commands, the Gnome panels wouldn't show up, and I'd be forced to restart GDM. Since I added xcompmgr to my startup options, I haven't encountered that problem again.

Ultimately (meaning, after about an hour of straight use), I ended up turning off shadows because the panels also get shadows, and the shadows overlay all the other windows - which is annoying when I have a window maximized (the shadow is cast over the window's title bar). The disappearance of the annoying ugliness when dragging windows is welcome change, enough!

Thanks for this howto!

[poofyhairguy]

Just FYI... Things seem to work well on my Acer Aspire 3002LCi using an SiS Mirage chip! I don't know whether that's accelerating it, or whether my Sempron 2800+ is powerful enough to do it on its own (I know that driver support for SiS Mirage is lacking). Shadows run really fast, though, and the window acceleration is pleasurably noticeable. Fades are too sluggish to use, though.

Its all your CPU. As I said, if you have a fast one drop shadows are fine. I'll define that better.

But unless you have smooth fades (really smooth) its being done by the CPU. Either you lack an Nvidia card, or the driver is not installed right.

Thats why I bought the Nvidia card. I only like the fades, and without and Nvidia card they won't work!

[/QUOTE]
Also, sometimes when I started up xcompmgr with the appropriate commands, the Gnome panels wouldn't show up, and I'd be forced to restart GDM. Since I added xcompmgr to my startup options, I haven't encountered that problem again.

Do this command next time (trust me):

[QUOTE]killall gnome-panel


Ultimately (meaning, after about an hour of straight use), I ended up turning off shadows because the panels also get shadows, and the shadows overlay all the other windows - which is annoying when I have a window maximized (the shadow is cast over the window's title bar). The disappearance of the annoying ugliness when dragging windows is welcome change, enough!

Thanks for this howto!

No problem. I don't really like the drop shadows. Since xcompmgr is a hack, they do not look natural like in Vista/OSX. By KDE 3.5 I think that side will be fixed though.

[seethru]

I can't stay away from xcompmgr :/
Poofy awesome script, one bug about killall gnome-panel though is that it doesn't seem to reload everything into the tray. I had amarok, xchat, and gaim all in the tray and only gaim came back up D:

[poofyhairguy]

I can't stay away from xcompmgr :/
Poofy awesome script, one bug about killall gnome-panel though is that it doesn't seem to reload everything into the tray. I had amarok, xchat, and gaim all in the tray and only gaim came back up D:


I can confirm the bug. Darn!

[rjwood]

I really like all this stuff but its just too much trouble.

I seem to remember P.H.Guy doing a thing of replacing metacity with e-17 in hoary a while back. Will you be doing another "how to" for that with breezy?

[hesee]

Anyways, my big question is what the original poster meant by saying that xorg is moving in a different direction than composite. What direction? What will be seeing for eye candy in the future?

I was wondering the same thing, is there going to be same kind of effects done by xorg itself? (don't know if this is stupid question, i'm still noob)

[pizzach]

I love the shadow effects done by xcompmgr. I hate the fading effect. It feel like a joke that just wastes time to me. But I suppose that is because my Second OS is Mac OS (X). aka, I can also use Mac OS's before that....

Anywho, xcompmgr rules for useability in that respect! The Mac OS 9 themes even without realtime shadows at least did a fake drop shadow. A lot of Gnome themes don't and are a pain in the @ss on the eyes that way.

[seethru]

I was wondering the same thing, is there going to be same kind of effects done by xorg itself? (don't know if this is stupid question, i'm still noob)
xorg 7 will have exa, which from my understanding, is built in composite.

[hesee]

xorg 7 will have exa, which from my understanding, is built in composite.

I see... Does anyone happen to know if there's any time schedule for xorg7, couldn't find it from xorg website? Surely we should have impressive and stable "Vista" effects before Vista users ;)

[poofyhairguy]

I see... Does anyone happen to know if there's any time schedule for xorg7, couldn't find it from xorg website? Surely we should have impressive and stable "Vista" effects before Vista users ;)


Here is info:

http://wiki.x.org/wiki/X11R6970ReleasePlan

Remember to not get too excited. Once the foundation is in place it will take a little time for the software and drivers to catch up. I might buy a ATI 9200 just because I hate waiting (then nvidia sits on shelf, lol), and switch to KDE (of course I think KDE will use it better first).

[poofyhairguy]

I love the shadow effects done by xcompmgr. I hate the fading effect. It feel like a joke that just wastes time to me. But I suppose that is because my Second OS is Mac OS (X). aka, I can also use Mac OS's before that....

Thats funny, because now when I use Apples I think "they are pretty, but they can't do the awesome fading effect my Linux box can do."


Anywho, xcompmgr rules for useability in that respect! The Mac OS 9 themes even without realtime shadows at least did a fake drop shadow. A lot of Gnome themes don't and are a pain in the @ss on the eyes that way.

E17 has those nice fake dropshadows.

[poofyhairguy]

I seem to remember P.H.Guy doing a thing of replacing metacity with e-17 in hoary a while back. Will you be doing another "how to" for that with breezy?

I can, but I won't be able to support it that well because I don't use that trick anymore.....because of xcompmgr. It and E17 fight worse than it and Metacity.

[pizzach]

E17 has those nice fake dropshadows.
Sigh. Reminds me. Gotta get a new copy of e17 and check the for the newest changes. Either that or wimp back to e16. Got gnome all tricked out though so I'm not in as much of a rush.:p

Hehe, just noticed a bit of misunderstanding maybe. Mac Os 8/9 basically as part of the the theme used a black lined down the left and bottom sides on the frontmost window. It was as fake a shadow as you could get. But it was a very good visual cue.

[piedamaro]

Nice HOWTO! However I have a couple of question on the script:

if [[ $a = "" ]]

why do you use a double bracket? I'e read thi is only in the korn shell. Also the right way of doing a test is something like:

if [ "$a" = "" ]
or better
if [ x$a = x ]

if you use [ $a = something ] it can become [ = something ] and it will generate an error because 'test' (the program linked by [ ) is expecting a binary condition.

[pizzach]

Okay, I just want to illustrate this a bit more clearly: Notice the two pictures I have attached to this message. Look closely at the window borders of the active and inactive windows. The active window has a dark black drop shadow. The inactive windows also have shadows but aren't as dark. What disappoints me about XWindows/gnome themes is that the active windows doesn't have shadows or anything the like period. It makes theme easier to disern even Mac OS 9 style. You don't need fancy processor heavy things that crash stuff to do the job.

xcompmgr throws out some nice shadows. But I miss the functionality of Mac OS X/9 shadows. The formost window casts a larger shadow. (look at the attached) Mac OS X does the same as 9 but it isn't noticeable until you look close. The beauty is in the details.

People understand what I'm talking about now?

Edit: 8 minutes of grammar/spelling fixes

[joflow]

I can, but I won't be able to support it that well because I don't use that trick anymore.....because of xcompmgr. It and E17 fight worse than it and Metacity.


I was just about to ask if it was possible to get this working with e17+gnome. I really like e17+gnome. Do you recommend this over e17? Which is prettier?

[poofyhairguy]

Ok, I was doing some research on the Gentoo Wiki and it seems that with the next release of Xorg some ATI cards (up to a 9200) will be able to get in on the fun:


You can get hardware accelled Render (EXA) for 9200 and below, using X.org CVS, thus making Composite ridiculously fast and even overcome NVidia cards, cause they don't support EXA yet. This is with Open Source "radeon" driver.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Xorg_X11_and_Transparency#ati-drivers_.2B_Xorg

[poofyhairguy]

When I am wrong I can admit it, but this time I'm VERY happy to be wrong.

Turns out that because the next Xorg (the big 7) is going to allow the card with the best open source drivers in existence (the ATI 9250's and below) to get in on the accerated Composite Manager party development in xcompmgr has started up again:

http://xapps.freedesktop.org/release/

Its there. A new version released at the end of last month. Joy!

I compiled it for myself and its working fine. I can already tell its more stable. I will try to make a deb file so that other can use it too, but if you can't wait this page will tell you what to do:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:gUCWnw7hL_4J:mandrakeusers.org/lofiversion/index.php/t18626.html+%22configure.ac:+9:+required+file+%60./%5Bconfig.h%5D.in%27+not+found%22&hl=en&client=firefox

And I included the xcompmgr file I compiled on my machine. Just untar the file and then use the terminal to cd to the directory that is made and then use the normal commands. I have my whole set-up changed for this new xcompmgr and I will tell an easy way to do that soon!

[poofyhairguy]

No wait, here is the post with the new xcompmgr.

[kashms]

Excellent news!!

Hope they will keep up developement so we can get some bling bling on our desktops :cool:

[neuschnee]

In my experience, xcompmgr or xcomposite in general is only really good for one thing: taking pretty screenshots and then immediately turning it off.

It's buggy as hell and even when "accelerated" is slow (try moving a big window around with drop shadows with xcompmgr with a 2ghz athlon, then do the same in OSX on an old iMac... heh).

It's not really worth it to me, at least until it is truly accelerated, unbuggy and clean like it is in OSX or (though awfully ugly) in Vista.

[Manny C]

In my experience, xcompmgr or xcomposite in general is only really good for one thing: taking pretty screenshots and then immediately turning it off.

It's buggy as hell and even when "accelerated" is slow (try moving a big window around with drop shadows with xcompmgr with a 2ghz athlon, then do the same in OSX on an old iMac... heh).

It's not really worth it to me, at least until it is truly accelerated, unbuggy and clean like it is in OSX or (though awfully ugly) in Vista.
Yep. Agree. But read poofyhairguy's initial post. Expect breakage.

[poofyhairguy]

In my experience, xcompmgr or xcomposite in general is only really good for one thing: taking pretty screenshots and then immediately turning it off.

I use it for weeks on end. About once a week or so it might crash the xserver on me, but otherwise it works great.


It's buggy as hell and even when "accelerated" is slow (try moving a big window around with drop shadows with xcompmgr with a 2ghz athlon, then do the same in OSX on an old iMac... heh).

Actually the acceration really depends on how good your video card is. I experiance less crashing and a greater overall speed with my 6600 GT compared to my 5200 FX.

And I'm hoping that the new framework that allows the ATI cards to accerate xcompmgr with EXA will be even more stable and fast. I'm willing to buy an old ATI card to find out. If thats the case.....


It's not really worth it to me, at least until it is truly accelerated, unbuggy and clean like it is in OSX or (though awfully ugly) in Vista.

Have fun waiting a year or more likely two or three till its up to your standards and I hope you have the correct video card even then.

Personally I am a desktop user so a little crashing deos not bug me especially if I can get the effects that Vista users will get late next year today.

I like an accerated desktop and I'm sick of waiting for the future. Xcompmgr might be a toy, but it a toy that is in active development and is already more usable than any other compsitor on the Linux Desktop.

[frodon]

I'm a happy xcompmgr user with a fx5200 nvidia card and like poofyhairguy i can't wait to have a composite manager without bug.
So yes there's some users who use xcompmgr all the time and enjoy using it :)

Poofy, is xcompmgr still in development or not, i'm lost ?

[poofyhairguy]

I'm a happy xcompmgr user with a fx5200 nvidia card and like poofyhairguy i can't wait to have a composite manager without bug.
So yes there's some users who use xcompmgr all the time and enjoy using it :)

Poofy, is xcompmgr still in development or not, i'm lost ?

As of very recently it is. In this post there is a version I compiled. It might work if you want to try it:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=472499&postcount=48

Its very exciting. I thought that this was no longer a work in progress, but the new Xorg made it relevent again.

Whats even more exiting is the thought that KDE's might get a lot better too.

[zachtib]

i have installed xcompmgr on my desktop, and i want to use it on my laptop, but not until the "cannot log out" bug is fixed. for me, that one inconvenience isn't worth the eye candy of the composite manager, so does anyone know if the new version fixes this?

[pizzach]

i have installed xcompmgr on my desktop, and i want to use it on my laptop, but not until the "cannot log out" bug is fixed. for me, that one inconvenience isn't worth the eye candy of the composite manager, so does anyone know if the new version fixes this?


Just tried it. By God, it fixed the log out problem. It's a miracle!! WHOOHOHOHOHOHOHOH! Now if only it wouldn't mess up my precious mplayer. :)

[frodon]

Does someone here tried that (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcompmgr/) ?

See this screenshot : http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=140598&ssid=13855

[JazzCrazed]

i have installed xcompmgr on my desktop, and i want to use it on my laptop, but not until the "cannot log out" bug is fixed. for me, that one inconvenience isn't worth the eye candy of the composite manager, so does anyone know if the new version fixes this?

I included a launcher, per the original poster's howto, for turning off and on the xcompmgr. I have to make sure it's turned off b4 i try to log off. Annoying, for sure, but I tolerate it cause I like my shadows. :)

If you do try to log out and the logout window doesn't show up because xcompmgr is still on, u can press "escape" to get your control over the desktop back. The logout window actually is there - it's just invisible. Then turn off xcompmgr, and try to logout again.

[zachtib]

Just tried it. By God, it fixed the log out problem. It's a miracle!! WHOOHOHOHOHOHOHOH! Now if only it wouldn't mess up my precious mplayer. :)

i just built the new xcompmgr from source (running amd64 and wasnt sure the prebuilt on would work) and the logout bug still applys to me

[pizzach]

i just built the new xcompmgr from source (running amd64 and wasnt sure the prebuilt on would work) and the logout bug still applys to me

That's odd. I build it from source too from poofyhairguy's link. (The directory expands as 1.1.3 while the actualy built version is 1.1.2.) I'm running a Pentium M though. Oh well. I'm happy I can log out at least...:???:

[zachtib]

That's odd. I build it from source too from poofyhairguy's link. (The directory expands as 1.1.3 while the actualy built version is 1.1.2.) I'm running a Pentium M though. Oh well. I'm happy I can log out at least...:???:

my laptops a pentium m, but its got ati graphics, dont really think that will work well

[pizzach]

my laptops a pentium m, but its got ati graphics, dont really think that will work well

On a side note, I'm only using shadows. I initialize xcompmgr as:
xcompmgr -cC -r 8 -l -9 -t -9 && killall gnome-panels

Otherwise it sounds like you might be out of luck.

[ThomThom]

And this work with older ATI card, but not newer? (I have an ATI 9800)

[ljamie82]

Well i got everything installed and it does look nice, though not to the degree i was expecting from this board. . . anyway one thing is i don't see any shadows, maybe i'll just tinker with the code some . . . it is supposed to have obvious shadow's though, right?

[neuschnee]

Actually the acceration really depends on how good your video card is. I experiance less crashing and a greater overall speed with my 6600 GT compared to my 5200 FX.
In OSX with cards much less powered than these two examples (6600 GT and 5200 FX) there is no lag. Why?... because it isn't a hack, and they did it right from the ground up.

It's not the card's fault, it's the framework. Requiring a certain card using EXA for unlaggy drop-shadows sounds just as ridiculous as Vista requiring a DX9-capable card. OpenGL is common and works... Apple gets it. :) (Xgl is our closest equivalent.. but does anyone actually use it?)

Have fun waiting a year or more likely two or three till its up to your standards and I hope you have the correct video card even then.
By your standards, I already have the so-called "correct" video card for using xcompmgr. Don't assume. Anyway it doesn't at all bother me that xcomp sucks... if it did I would have switched to OSX ages ago.

[poofyhairguy]

And this work with older ATI card, but not newer? (I have an ATI 9800)

Yes. The ATI 92XX and 9000 cards have excellent open source drivers that do not come from ATI. These open source drivers are what allow the new ATI acceration to work. These card are the most power cards on the market with open specifications.

I hate to say it, but something tells me the worst situation to be in for compositing right now is to own an ATI card newer than a 9250. There are open source drivers but it seems it will be a while before they are able to fully accerate a composite manager while the open source ATI drivers and the Nvidia drivers do it today.

[poofyhairguy]

i have installed xcompmgr on my desktop, and i want to use it on my laptop, but not until the "cannot log out" bug is fixed. for me, that one inconvenience isn't worth the eye candy of the composite manager, so does anyone know if the new version fixes this?

The new xcompmgr did not fix this bug for me, but there are ways to deal with it.

One is to follow my guide and make an "on/off" button and turn it off before logging out.

The other is to find a way to make a script that turns it off automatically when you log out.

The first solution is a good one because xcompmgr is so buggy that you want an on /off switch anyway.

[poofyhairguy]

Well i got everything installed and it does look nice, though not to the degree i was expecting from this board. . . anyway one thing is i don't see any shadows, maybe i'll just tinker with the code some . . . it is supposed to have obvious shadow's though, right?

Not if you use my custom xcompmgr command, as I don't like shadows. They make my gdesklets look bad.

[poofyhairguy]

In OSX with cards much less powered than these two examples (6600 GT and 5200 FX) there is no lag. Why?... because it isn't a hack, and they did it right from the ground up.

If you pay upper class prices you should get an upper class product. The Linux Desktop is putting together its eye candy revolution on a shoe-string budget.

Comparing the Linux desktop to OSX is a surefire way to get depressed and it does not help anyone.


It's not the card's fault, it's the framework. Requiring a certain card using EXA for unlaggy drop-shadows sounds just as ridiculous as Vista requiring a DX9-capable card. OpenGL is common and works... Apple gets it. :) (Xgl is our closest equivalent.. but does anyone actually use it?)

You don't seem to get it. Its not the framework's fault, its not the card's fault. Its the fault of poor Linux drivers. The two best Linux drivers are Nvidia's closed one and the ATI 92xx open source one. They both work now with composite.

It has nothing to do with opengl. Having a fully developed opengl xserver (the xegl) means nothing if there are no good opengl Linux drivers to work with. Luckily it seems that as a result of the next Xorg release's effort to make the drivers independent, the open source drivers for most card can rapidly get better. If not there is always the old ATI cards or new Nvidia ones...

Again comparing to Apple is fruitless. Apple controls their hardware and has GREAT drivers for every video card in every Mac. If Linux had the same driver situation the Xegl would probably be where the effort would be focused, not on EXA. EXA was created because it the driver situation is so bad that if we had to wait for it to settle after the xorg 7.0 release to start making an accerated desktop, then Linux would not have one for two years after Vista was released.


By your standards, I already have the so-called "correct" video card for using xcompmgr. Don't assume.

My only assumption is the obvious one that unlike OSX or even Windows, desktop Linux has to care more about legacy hardware (if only because so many people use it to "save" machines the other OSes left behind) and this fact makes it so that the majority of Linux users lack the specific cards needed to have a nicely accerated desktop.


Anyway it doesn't at all bother me that xcomp sucks... if it did I would have switched to OSX ages ago.

For me the fact that xcompmgr became semi-stable is the reason why I don't own a Mac today. I'm willing to invest time and money to help develop the Linux solution (or at least help bug test it) because now that I have used an accerated desktop on my sister's Powerbook and my computer with xcompmgr turned on I can't go back.

Honestly if getting a new ATI card keeps me from buying an expensive and soon to be obsolete PPC Mac before they get the Intel ones than its money well spent. I hate waiting.

[zachtib]

Yes. The ATI 92XX and 9000 cards have excellent open source drivers that do not come from ATI. These open source drivers are what allow the new ATI acceration to work. These card are the most power cards on the market with open specifications.

I hate to say it, but something tells me the worst situation to be in for compositing right now is to own an ATI card newer than a 9250. There are open source drivers but it seems it will be a while before they are able to fully accerate a composite manager while the open source ATI drivers and the Nvidia drivers do it today.

and where would i go to get these drivers (as it is, ive got great 3d acceleration on my radeon 9000 with the official drivers, if these are better, that would be great)

[neuschnee]

You don't seem to get it. Its not the framework's fault, its not the card's fault. Its the fault of poor Linux drivers. The two best Linux drivers are Nvidia's closed one and the ATI 92xx open source one. They both work now with composite.

It has nothing to do with opengl. Having a fully developed opengl xserver (the xegl) means nothing if there are no good opengl Linux drivers to work with. Luckily it seems that as a result of the next Xorg release's effort to make the drivers independent, the open source drivers for most card can rapidly get better. If not there is always the old ATI cards or new Nvidia ones..
I don't understand what is so bad about Linux/X11 OpenGL drivers? How are they "poor", exactly? I've been using GL on Linux/X11 since the age of 3dfx and Matrox G200/400's... I actually prefer it to Windows in some ways. I get around the same FPS as in windows (sometimes more, sometimes less.. always near the same).

The problem IS the framework. If we had a good GL-driven framework, adding drop shadows on windows and "true" transparency would prove trivial. OSX doesn't shine because of its drivers (though you're right of course, they are excellent), but because of the display-postscript-driven framework they have used since the first version of OSX.

In Vista, everything is a vector in D3D. Same idea...

[joflow]

Yeah, I have to agree. The graphic/video driver situation is very bad especially with ATI products. As it stands, I have a Radeon 9500 that I can't get accelerated (even screeen savers run at 3-4 fps) and a TV Tuner (theater 550 pro) that has no driver at all and has no prospects of having linux support in the near future. I think we (ATI users) need to email ATI and demand better linux support for their products.

[poofyhairguy]

I don't understand what is so bad about Linux/X11 OpenGL drivers? How are they "poor", exactly?

2D acceration is slower with the official ATI drivers than with with the open source driver, even for newer cards. Yet because ATI does not open their specs the open source 3D drivers for the newer ATi cards have to reverse engineer and they are slow. So unless you have a ATI 9200 or lower you cannot get accerated 2D and 3D on the same card.

The Nvidia drivers are far better and can do Opengl work as fast as their Windows counterparts, but most cards are not Nvidia cards. Plus the Nvidia drivers are not open like the rest of the OS so its hard to make them work well together all the time.

Intel Cards have open source drivers, but onlyt recently are they getting to the point where they even get a fraction of the performance of the Windows drivers. This is bad because those cards are slow anyway.

I've been using GL on Linux/X11 since the age of 3dfx and Matrox G200/400's... I actually prefer it to Windows in some ways. I get around the same FPS as in windows (sometimes more, sometimes less.. always near the same).

Being as good as Windows is not good enough if Vista is going to need Directx 9 cards to work well.

The problem IS the framework. If we had a good GL-driven framework, adding drop shadows on windows and "true" transparency would prove trivial.

OSX doesn't shine because of its drivers (though you're right of course, they are excellent), but because of the display-postscript-driven framework they have used since the first version of OSX.

OSX shines because its a locked box. Apple knows everything that in there and can plan for all the possibilities. An Apple box is more like a gam console in that the developers know EXACTLY what platform they are shooting for and what people have. Thats what makes the magic (notice complaints of those who tried to hack in onto Dell laptops only to find many thigns did not work).

It comes down to drivers. Framework does not matter if you do not have the hardware support to back it up. Most Opengl acceration on the Linux desktop is done through Mesa drivers - a very poor solution but the only one Linux has for now. when this changes (after Xorg 7 brings about better drivers) the desktop can improve and a framework can be built.

There is a reason that Xcompmgr died in between last year and right now- because the developers wanted to wait for the open source drivers to be ready before they started development again.

[pizzach]

So....I guess I'm the only one who is using xcompmgr and when logging out it doesn't give the bug? :confused: Wonder why. I kind of feel like I won the lottery or something. Except for not being any richer.

[poofyhairguy]

So....I guess I'm the only one who is using xcompmgr and when logging out it doesn't give the bug? :confused: Wonder why. I kind of feel like I won the lottery or something. Except for not being any richer.


Be happy.

[bunkee]

I tried this with my radeon 9700 and none of the commands worked well but i did notice that when i add

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

to my xorg.conf it changes my opengl from ati 1.3.5395(X4.30-8318blah blah blah to mesa3d

not sure if that is why i'm having such poor results.

[poofyhairguy]

I tried this with my radeon 9700 and none of the commands worked well but i did notice that when i add

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

to my xorg.conf it changes my opengl from ati 1.3.5395(X4.30-8318blah blah blah to mesa3d

not sure if that is why i'm having such poor results.

Only ATI cards that are 9250's or lower have composite support.

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/ExaStatus


Supported: (Will be included in 6.9/7.0)- radeon (r100/r200 with Render accel, r300 core-only. May be issues in non-DRI mode, and DGA unsupported).

Only the r100/r2xx cards now have the ability to use render accel which is needed to accerate the effects.

I'm THIS close to buying a cheap ATI 9250 just to test this new driver and see hwo it works.

The drivers for the r300 cards (aka ATI 9500's+) might be rapidly improved after Xorg 7 is officially released in Decemeber but no one knows really.

[poofyhairguy]

Because of a suggestion I just read on a mailing list, I am now playing with changing the priority of Xcompmgr to see if it crashes less.

If this turns out this helps at all I will add it to the guide. Already I can tell that the newest xcompmgr works better than before, so included a version I compiled in the first post. Just as I guessed, the developers were waiting for the ATI 92xx cards to catch up before really getting serious about composting.

Finally I edited the guide so I won't give people with newer ATI cards false hope. My recommendation to those of you with ATI cards that are 9500 series or better- if you are not a gamer sell them on Ebay while they still have value and get a compatible card. Xcompmgr is fun to play with.

[Maverick911]

OK, so now I really would like to see these effects.I've got an ATI Radeon 9200 mobile. I edited xorg.conf, but I'm getting the following messages when i try to enable universe repo.:???: Can anyone tell me what's wrong? Thanks

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/breezy/universe/binary-i386/Packages.gz: Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)

W: Couldn't stat source package list http://archive.ubuntu.com breezy/universe Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_breezy_universe_bi nary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)

[pizzach]

Okay. I feel better. I got my computer to freeze on log out just like the old days by re-enableing System>Sessions>the check if you really want to logout option.:D I rolled back a version and it doesn't seem to have a connection to the problem now.

[poofyhairguy]

OK, so now I really would like to see these effects.I've got an ATI Radeon 9200 mobile. I edited xorg.conf, but I'm getting the following messages when i try to enable universe repo.:???: Can anyone tell me what's wrong? Thanks

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/breezy/universe/binary-i386/Packages.gz: Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)

W: Couldn't stat source package list http://archive.ubuntu.com breezy/universe Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_breezy_universe_bi nary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)

I need to see your sources.list:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and post it here.

Or use the xcompmgr I provide as an attachment in the first post.

[poofyhairguy]

Even Rasterman is joining the xcompmgr party:

http://www.mail-archive.com/enlightenment-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg05050.html

[poofyhairguy]

Ok, the stability of the new xcompmgr has driven me to think about using drop shadows again. So after much tweaking I have created an awesome setting:

xcompmgr -fF -I-.002 -O-.003 -D6 -cC -t-3 -l-5 -r5

That one gives the fade like I love it, plus it has drop shadows that look better overall. The main thing that I did not like about the drop shadows is how they looked on drop down menus such as the Firefox url box or the Applications menu. The shadows are way less wild now. This command's drop shadows are what I came up with after messing with a Mac all day- its the best I can do.

I hope you enjoy this new super setting, I know I will.

[poofyhairguy]

Ok, final update of the night. I have added extra steps to help those with cards that do not accerate xcompmgr.

Someone please test this for me so I can get an idea of how fast a CPU you need to do drop shadows.

[rjwood]

hi p.h.g! Thanks for all the updates and investigating. I kind-a follow you around when it comes to most eye-candy stuff. Everyone is so helpful and fun.
I just finished reading kryle's window manager thread and I have read in the past where you have expressed some disappointment with metacity. What do you use as a wm? I have xcompmgr installed and running from your thread info and 23megs 'how to' on terminal transparancy. Not much else, just like to fool around with my ubuntu so as to learn a little. I have read some good things about sawfish. Does that interfere with all the eye candy I have? I have tried e-17 but not quite ready for it yet until either I or it is more developed. Thanks in advance.

[Maverick911]

I need to see your sources.list:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and post it here.

Or use the xcompmgr I provide as an attachment in the first post.

Thanks for the reply. Here is my sources.list
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
## deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
## deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ breezy universe main restricted multiverse

deb http://antesis.freecontrib.org/mirrors/ubuntu/plf/ breezy free non-free
deb-src http://antesis.freecontrib.org/mirrors/ubuntu/plf/ breezy free non-free

deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/



Thanks again.

[rjwood]

Also I have included the newest xcompmgr that I personally compiled. All you (should) have to do in untar the file into....say your home folder...and the use the "cd" command to get into the fold made then use all of the xcompmgr commands as I indicated above.

Should I remove the existing version before I begin using this new one?

[poofyhairguy]

hi p.h.g! Thanks for all the updates and investigating. I kind-a follow you around when it comes to most eye-candy stuff. Everyone is so helpful and fun.
I just finished reading kryle's window manager thread and I have read in the past where you have expressed some disappointment with metacity. What do you use as a wm?

Honestly I use Metacity because I find the version that comes with Breezy is the most compatible with xcompmgr. The version in Hoary was compiled with its worthless compositor enabled, but that is not the case for Breezy.

[poofyhairguy]

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ breezy universe multiverse

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
## deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
## deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe

deb http://antesis.freecontrib.org/mirrors/ubuntu/plf/ breezy free non-free
deb-src http://antesis.freecontrib.org/mirrors/ubuntu/plf/ breezy free non-free

deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/



See if that works. Be sure to do a

sudo apt-get update

[poofyhairguy]

Also I have included the newest xcompmgr that I personally compiled. All you (should) have to do in untar the file into....say your home folder...and the use the "cd" command to get into the fold made then use all of the xcompmgr commands as I indicated above.

Should I remove the existing version before I begin using this new one?

I haven't. But I did replace the old one with the new one by copying it to the

/usr/bin/

folder using

gksudo nautilus

[23meg]

I still have the logout bug with the new version as well. I'll report about overall stability a while later. Btw, my favorite setting is -cfF -D9 -r14 -O 0.02 -I 0.040

[poofyhairguy]

I still have the logout bug with the new version as well. I'll report about overall stability a while later. Btw, my favorite setting is -cfF -D9 -r14 -O 0.02 -I 0.040


The fade on yours (I might steal that one day) is nice, but the drop shadows are crazy.

[23meg]

Right, the shadows may be a bit big but they look good to me on a high resolution display. By the way, I've only had one crash with the new xcompmgr in more than 48 hours, which is a big improvement over the old one. And I did all sorts of crazy things such as resizing the gnome panel, dragging and dropping files onto the bmp playlist, launching totem and switching to virtual terminals ;)

[poofyhairguy]

Right, the shadows may be a bit big but they look good to me on a high resolution display. By the way, I've only had one crash with the new xcompmgr in more than 48 hours, which is a big improvement over the old one. And I did all sorts of crazy things such as resizing the gnome panel, dragging and dropping files onto the bmp playlist, launching totem and switching to virtual terminals ;)

I can only make it crash if I drag a playing video file (in Totem) under my translucent Gnome panels. Then it hard crashes.

Otherwise stable.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I have a couple of questions.

1st my stats:
Ubuntu
Dell Inspiron 2200 with onboard GFX
Celeron 1.4
786megs memory
xcompmgr -cC -t-2 -l-3 -r3 -o.35 -f -D3 is the command I use.
Using xcompmgr from repos

Heres a screenshot of what it currently looks like.
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/930/screenshot9in.th.png (http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/930/screenshot9in.png)
Very minimal shadows. Just enough to give depth.

1. Can you exclude apps from xcompmgr? ie: gDesklets
2. When I 1st boot it takes 2 mins for my session apps to come up after xcompmgr is loaded. Any way to speed this up?
3. On my nVidia system I get artifacts on the desktop. They vanish if I move a window over the area to refresh it. Ever seen this?
4. Can I make xcompmgr -cC -t-2 -l-3 -r3 -o.35 -f -D3 into xcompmgr -cC -t2 -l3 -r3 -o.35 -f -D3 and still work?

Great job on this man. Thanx.

[tipi]

anyone could help me , i tried doing this vista like thing
and now at boot i get error "starting x server failed, possible ....
x server now dissabled, restart gdm when all is reconfigured"

and than it get's to a command line

how do i reset all to default from this command line?

[23meg]

MetalMusicAddict:

1. No, but IIRC gDesklets had a translucency option in its configuration; disabling that may help.
2. Play with the order setting or launch xcompmgr manually after session startup
3. Seen it, but no longer seeing it with the latest version except some slider artifacts in totem.
4. Try it; if it works it works.

[23meg]

how do i reset all to default from this command line?
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

remove the following section

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

hit ctrl+x, and then y.

[Biased turkey]

Merci a lot for that HowTo Poofyhairguy.
Just followed the instructions on page 1 of the thread and got nice shadows and transparency with my xfce4 desktop.
Later today I'll try it on my gnome desktop after installing xcompmgr then I'll do it on my Gentoo KDE distro too.
Now that I get the composite manager installed and running, could someone please be kind enough to tell me how to use that feature ?
So my question is :
How do I adjust the transparency level in xfce4 windows ?
Any URL, tip , info or R.T.F.M. :) advise is welcome.

Just tried it with gnome:
sudo apt-get install xcompmgr transset
So far, so good.
Maybe I'll encounter some bug when running some specific application.
And yes, I installed that feature on Gentoo ( 64 bits version ) too.
Ubuntu and Gentoo rock

[mikko.ohtamaa]

I have an old Dell Inspiron 5000e laptop with ATI Rage Mobility M3 display card (16 mb memory). Though this card doesn't have enough muscles (or it is a driver problem) to run composite manager (tested it!) here is an useful hint.

This laptop has 1400x1050 LCD screen. By default, Ubuntu runs it in 32-bit colors mode without direct rendering mode enabled. Direct rendering speeds up window handling a lot.

The display card doesn't have enough video memory to run direct rendering in 1400x1050x32. You must drop color depth to 16 bit by modifying your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:



Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage Mobility M3 (AGP)"
Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" # doesn't work with Mobility M3
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Option "DDCMode" # doesn't work with Mobility M3
Option "RenderAccel" "true" # doesn't work
Option "SubPixelOrder" "NONE" # doesn't work
Option "ColorTiling" "false" # doesn't work
EndSection

...

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage Mobility M3 (AGP)"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 16 *** here***
SubSection "Display"

...




If direct rendering is enabled you should see the following line in /var/log/Xorg.0.log:


(II) R128(0): Direct rendering enabled

[23meg]

How do I adjust the transparency level in xfce4 windows ?

Tried transset? I'm not sure if it conflicts with XFCE's composite manager but trying wouldn't hurt; type "transset 0.5", click a window and see what it does.

By the way, here comes my new faster, less buggy favorite with which I've had no crashes: -fF -n -D9 -r14 -O 0.05 -I 0.075

No more shadows, fast fades, translucency.

[poofyhairguy]

1. Can you exclude apps from xcompmgr? ie: gDesklets

I wish. Good point. I like the shadow on many of my desklets though.


2. When I 1st boot it takes 2 mins for my session apps to come up after xcompmgr is loaded. Any way to speed this up?

What order do you run it in?


3. On my nVidia system I get artifacts on the desktop. They vanish if I move a window over the area to refresh it. Ever seen this?

Yes. And I get weird scrolling mess ups too. Its part of it. Worth it for me because I have less outright crashes.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I wish. Good point. I like the shadow on many of my desklets though.
Weird thing is shadows appear around the desklets screengrab which is sometimes well away from the desklet. ie: StarterBar. Oh well.
What order do you run it in?
41. Like the guide says. Should I go higher or lower?

I see a new xcompmgr mentioned. Im having trouble finding it to download. Is it a .deb or source?

[23meg]

It's a source but there's also a binary in the package as well. I easily built it from source and checkinstalled it, no extra dependencies.

[poofyhairguy]

I see a new xcompmgr mentioned. Im having trouble finding it to download. Is it a .deb or source?

Its compiled in a zip file as an attachment in the first post. Extract it somewhere, then cd into that folder when you use the commands.

[fabs0028]

hello
well i build the new version easily with checkinstall for my ubuntu64.
It works pretty great.

I still got the log out problem as everybody.
As previously said, xcompmgr hangs my sessions start-up programs for about a minute.

Anyway it is pretty great :)

[frodon]

I have got the same problem, xcompmgr hangs my session start-up for about 3 minutes if i add it in the session start-up programs.
So i removed it from the sessions start-up programs to solve the problem.

Maybe it could be added in the bug list.

[maxtreiber]

If i would have a R100/R2XX ati card, i still could not use those new EXA acceleration thinks, because dapper is still using xorg 6.8.2, right ?
How long do we have to wait for 7.0 ?
or does someone have experimental cvs packages around ? Or just binaries ?
Does 7.0 help for >R300 cards, too ?

[poofyhairguy]

If i would have a R100/R2XX ati card, i still could not use those new EXA acceleration thinks, because dapper is still using xorg 6.8.2, right ?
How long do we have to wait for 7.0 ?
or does someone have experimental cvs packages around ? Or just binaries ?

Eventually it will be in Dapper I am sure. Till then we wait I guess.


Does 7.0 help for >R300 cards, too ?

Kinda. No acceration though, just compatibility.

[maxtreiber]

just tried it out with x.org CVS.
Followed instructions from:
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/CvsPage#head-f76fe9878bbeadc8b6541cf7e23bdb14ad876d2d
... very easy and straigtforward.
And with my ATI 9250 composite just works perfectly.
And not only that: Xv, TV-Overlay, everything, just perfect,
Thanks!

[pxgray]

This thread is ridiculously long, so I didn't parse the whole thing looking for it, but I thought I'd at least mention that for me, turning on xcompmgr broke Flash in Firefox and caused it to crash every time a page with Flash was loaded. I have an NVidia card and was using the recommended command from the HOWTO.

That being said I had to turn xcompmgr off ultimately because it was so unstable on my system. The system would crash or the Xserver would restart at the most random and inopportune times. Having the drop shadow effect was cool, but not cool enough to risk me putting my fist through the monitor because the paper I was typing was completely lost. I can't wait until this is more stable, but for now I'm going to have to leave it off.

[maxtreiber]

Me again :)
I was amazed of the idea to have only the current active window without opacity and all the others transparent because i use the "Select windows when mouse moves over them" option in the gnome Window Preferences.
Using this, i can work in one window and if i want to see whats behind in another, i just move the mouse over it and can look through it :)
anyways, i wrote a small C programm to do exactly this:

http://81.169.175.95/transd.c

compile and run with:

gcc transd.c -o transd -lX11 && while true; do ./transd; done

its very badly programmed (most of the code is stolen) and needs a lot of values tweaked, but please try it out and tell me what you think!

[Chrissss]

@maxtreiber

Yes, indeed, that little programm is nice :)

It leads into the right direction!

[23meg]

Does everyone experience Xorg using an average of twice / three times the CPU cycles it normally does when using composite? Does this mean composite is utilizing the GPU only marginally at the current state of things?

[oobuntoo]

Does anyone get "jiggling" artifacts on left and right edges of window when dragging it from side to side. This happens on my system with geforce 6600gt and 1.6ghz athlon xp using "nvidia" driver. It happens with or without shadow and transparency turned on. It's quite annoying. The strange thing is that it only happen when dragging window horizontally, but not vertically.

[23meg]

Does anyone get "jiggling" artifacts on left and right edges of window when dragging it from side to side. This happens on my system with geforce 6600gt and 1.6ghz athlon xp using "nvidia" driver. It happens with or without shadow and transparency turned on. It's quite annoying. The strange thing is that it only happen when dragging window horizontally, but not vertically.
I have it on my laptop with a Geforce Go6200. It happens without xcompmgr as well, unfortunately. I can't pinpoint what it is; bad vertical refresh rates shouldn't matter much on LCDs but this is quite noticeable.

[poofyhairguy]

This thread is ridiculously long, so I didn't parse the whole thing looking for it, but I thought I'd at least mention that for me, turning on xcompmgr broke Flash in Firefox and caused it to crash every time a page with Flash was loaded. I have an NVidia card and was using the recommended command from the HOWTO.

That being said I had to turn xcompmgr off ultimately because it was so unstable on my system. The system would crash or the Xserver would restart at the most random and inopportune times. Having the drop shadow effect was cool, but not cool enough to risk me putting my fist through the monitor because the paper I was typing was completely lost. I can't wait until this is more stable, but for now I'm going to have to leave it off.

What's your hardware? It would help to know. Flash works fine for me, but I too have experianced crashes that has lost my work.

I hope my warning to everyone early on was clear- xcompmgr is buggy. No way around it. I hope by this time next year any of the compositors are stable enough to use full time.

[poofyhairguy]

Does everyone experience Xorg using an average of twice / three times the CPU cycles it normally does when using composite? Does this mean composite is utilizing the GPU only marginally at the current state of things?

That means the current acceration architexture sucks. Nvidia rushed out their competition to EXA- thats what we are all using. When EXA is fully developed (say 2007) these problems will be a memory.

[poofyhairguy]

Does anyone get "jiggling" artifacts on left and right edges of window when dragging it from side to side. This happens on my system with geforce 6600gt and 1.6ghz athlon xp using "nvidia" driver. It happens with or without shadow and transparency turned on. It's quite annoying. The strange thing is that it only happen when dragging window horizontally, but not vertically.

Yep. Even without xcompgr it will do that. In fact, the only system I know that doesn't is OSX's system. Thats because they built in from the ground up to make it SEEM as responsive as possible.

That problem is part xdamage and part buffering problems. I honestly don't think it will be fixed till we moved to Xegl in two or three years.

[varunus]

For all who are having flash problems:

I found a trick on the gentoo forums (*gasp*) on how to fix these firefox crashes. (All composite effects still work with firefox and flash if you do this, don't worry.) Try this with any program you think may be having problems.

First, open up your firefox launcher file with the following:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/firefox

Find the part that looks like this:
##
## Variables
##
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"

Add a line, making it look like this:
##
## Variables
##
##Added for composite extension to work
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"


Flash will no longer have any issues. This makes firefox ignore the extra alpha channel that xcompmgr gives it for color. Because the application itself doesn't do anything with the alpha channel, all of the effects still work, and flash will no longer complain.

[poofyhairguy]

For all who are having flash problems:

I found a trick on the gentoo forums (*gasp*) on how to fix these firefox crashes. (All composite effects still work with firefox and flash if you do this, don't worry.) Try this with any program you think may be having problems.

First, open up your firefox launcher file with the following:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/firefox

Find the part that looks like this:
##
## Variables
##
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"

Add a line, making it look like this:
##
## Variables
##
##Added for composite extension to work
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
MOZ_DIST_BIN="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox"
MOZ_PROGRAM="/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin"


Flash will no longer have any issues. This makes firefox ignore the extra alpha channel that xcompmgr gives it for color. Because the application itself doesn't do anything with the alpha channel, all of the effects still work, and flash will no longer complain.


Cool, added to main guide.

By the way, I have gotten a GUI for Xcompmgr to work in Ubuntu. I will make a NEW guide for that sometime next week.

[seraphim]

1.: thanks for all your great work phg! :)

2.: my hardware: athlon 1700+
geforce 6800

the cpu has got a lot of work...what exactly is generated by the gpu?
when i change transparency or a window is fading, the cpu is used.
the nvidia-driver should be installed correctly, at least glxinfo returns nvidia and games are working ;) .

so is there something i can do to lower the cpu-usage?

[fabs0028]

Hello everybody
Well it seems i have some problems with composite.

Since some days i noticed i had problemes with glx and composite ... glxinfo or a xscreensaver with opengl made my X server crash and restart so i disabled glx and now it works fine.
I noticed that it produced that line in /var/log/syslog. gdm_slave_xioerror_handler : erreur X fatale - Redémarrage de :0
I 'd like to know if i could find a X log to see what is the error of X but until now i didn't find anything interesting.

I also have an other problem : after a long period of use of Xorg with xcompmgr, the server become really slow and take all the cpu and the memory and is slow as hell.
The speed come back to normal if i quit and relaunch xcompmgr but the memory use doesn't decrease.
For example now Xorg uses 427mo of RES memory as shown in top.

For the glx problem i'll try 7667 nvidia drivers instead of the 7676 maybe it will be better.

[poofyhairguy]

the cpu has got a lot of work...what exactly is generated by the gpu?
when i change transparency or a window is fading, the cpu is used.
the nvidia-driver should be installed correctly, at least glxinfo returns nvidia and games are working ;) .

If you want to see how much work the GPU is doing, take away the "renderaccel" line in the xorg.conf and try to use Xcompmgr. Even on the fastest machines I can't get the "fading trick" to be usuable.

Of course, if it makes no difference then something is wrong with your set up beforehand.

so is there something i can do to lower the cpu-usage?

Not really. We are really riding on the edge of the knife with this stuff. When EXA is mature (and when Nvidia switches over to EXA like they now say they will) then hopefully less CPU will be used. Till then (I say....6 months from now if we are lucky?) we have to deal with what we have.

Personally I'm going to cheat. I'm buying an AMD 3800 x2 dual core processor so that one of the cores can handle the Xcompmgr CPU usage while the other handles my applications. I know this solution is not practical to all (and honestly I have been waiting for the processors to come out for the past couple years for an upgrade, so its not ALL about xcompmgr), but the other alternative is waiting.

As soon as I can find a way to benchmark the ATI cards I will see if their EXA is better when it comes to CPU usage then the Nvidia solution.

[poofyhairguy]

Hello everybody
Well it seems i have some problems with composite.

Thats the state it in now.


I also have an other problem : after a long period of use of Xorg with xcompmgr, the server become really slow and take all the cpu and the memory and is slow as hell.
The speed come back to normal if i quit and relaunch xcompmgr but the memory use doesn't decrease.
For example now Xorg uses 427mo of RES memory as shown in top.


This has bugged me too. The best answer I have found comes from Rasterman ( maker of E17). He thinks that when the video card runs out of its own RAM is when the slowdown occurs and it starts to eat into system RAM. Apparently the "fading trick" causes RAM leekage, but since I am not a leet Xserver hacker I cannot fix the problem.

The good thing is that after a year of sitting on the shelf, Xcompmgr is getting love from those who actually can fix the thing. Now that EXA exists all of the awesome people hacking on that framework are using xcompmgr to do their testing. I hope this will drive them to kill the bugs in Xcompmgr as they kill the bugs in EXA/Xorg.

In the long run xcompmgr is not a solution. Its kinda just a "proof of concept" that people like me who are tired of waiting for Xorg to catch up to the other OSes in this matter are using WAY beyond what it was ever intended to do. I hate waiting. Based on my research, here is a timeline for when stuff will happen that is more than toys. Of course this is just my opinion/ prediction and I am not part of any xserver or distro development team so I could be way off. But here is my best shot:

December 2005 -Xorg 7 comes. With it comes nice EXA and almost stable composite for the ATI 92xx or less ATI cards. Also stimulates development of Xserver drivers.

Spring 2006 - (hopefully) EXA will be hammered on to the point where it is stable for ATI cards (up to 92xx) and Intel Graphics cards (after ATI). It seems thats what all of the EXA developers are using. I also hope (kinda for my own sake) that this is when the Nvidia Driver Team (who is AWESOME when it comes to drivers - they made something like EXA before EXA even had a name and we are all using it for xcompmgr) will release new Xorg drivers with EXA support or more stable whatever they call that copy of EXA they have made.

Summer/Fall 2006- KDE 4 will (hopefully) bring with it a STABLE Composite Manager built in when it is released. Hopefully the chips that are labled work in progress have some sort of EXA accerateion:

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/ExaStatus

And by then the ATI 92xx's have what we can call "the first stable composite set up on the Linux desktop." Maybe also by this time ATI will release drivers for newer ATI cards with EXA, but I would not hold my breath. Also maybe XFCE will have a stable compsitor.....who knows about that one.

This is when the Cairo themes will come flooding in I hope.

Spring 2007 - Xegl gets to a medium usuable state where people like me are using it despite some crashing (aka the situation with Xcompmgr now). Xorg drivers for many cards have developed to the point where some distros (maybe even a major one.....maybe) turns on composite by default. I hope by this point the Linux desktop can at least SEEM LIKE its at the state of the OSX desktop today.

If we are lucky this will be when Gnome adds its Luminocity compositor to Metacity, but I would not hold my breath.

Summer/ Fall 2007 - If not in spring then this is when Gnome will add Luminocitiness I hope (or just give up the ghost to KDE because it will have compositer for years by then). ATI releases the specs for all the 9800 and below cards so that new stable drivers with EXA can be made for them (kinda a dream but possible). By this point the possibilites for composite will be mature (as in more than fading tricks and such- I want a stable Expose copy!)

Spring 2008 and beyond - Xegl is stable enough many can use it full time (this might be only a dream but please let me have it or I won't be able to hold off on buying a Mac till then). The Looking Glass Project emerges in a mature state and blows the OS using public away. The xserver reaches a point where its comparible to what MS offers by that point and begins to pull out in front.

Dancing in the streets.

[Paulus]

Spring 2008 and beyond - Xegl is stable enough many can use it full time (this might be only a dream but please let me have it or I won't be able to hold off on buying a Mac till then). The Looking Glass Project emerges in a mature state and blows the OS using public away. The xserver reaches a point where its comparible to what MS offers by that point and begins to pull out in front.

Dancing in the streets.

:KS Thats what i'm talking about! Looks like there's a great future ahead, just got to keep waiting i guess! I can't see M$ releasing another version of windows before Xegl is stable, the time linux can step ahead (if not before(or already?- being free an' all)).

btw: respect ++ for all the research and hard work u have put in poofyhairguy!

[poofyhairguy]

:KS Thats what i'm talking about! Looks like there's a great future ahead, just got to keep waiting i guess!

I once read that "the Linux desktop is a side effect of the Linux server." The state of the xserver when the Xorg fork happened pretty much proves this point. At that time it could draw things on most screens- thats all a server needs to do (if that much). So it will take a while to move from that to a modern desktop. Drivers have to catch up. Window managers have to catch up. The concept that no modern (as in post 92xx) cards have open drivers that can do the job has to be dealt with (that will be a hard bridge to cross for many OSS fans). Opengl has to be evaluated for its effectiveness. Computer need to get more powerful to move up the baseline (Linux HAS to be able to run on older machines unlike MS where their "advances" force you to throw your old machine in the trash).

Yet despite the challenges its a bright future.


btw: respect ++ for all the research and hard work u have put in poofyhairguy!

Thanks. I try my best.

[TimmyJ]

great little prediction timeline poofyhairguy :-) One thing I think should be at least mentioned is the Open Graphics card project though. They have been making some great progress lately (In fact they even mentioned that getting a card for sale out by the end of the year is a possiblity) and I'm real excited to see where it takes us!!

Read all about it here:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/5743

[poofyhairguy]

great little prediction timeline poofyhairguy :-) One thing I think should be at least mentioned is the Open Graphics card project though. They have been making some great progress lately (In fact they even mentioned that getting a card for sale out by the end of the year is a possiblity) and I'm real excited to see where it takes us!!


I have kept up with it and I wish them luck, but until they can beat an ATI 92xx (the current high water mark for OSS graphics) I am a little skeptical.

[flange]

I have kept up with it and I wish them luck, but until they can beat an ATI 92xx (the current high water mark for OSS graphics) I am a little skeptical.

This frustrates me.

Desktop Linux is a small market, no doubt, but here's what I see happening. For a long time now, Nvidia has released closed source drivers for Linux users. Maybe they are intended for graphics professionals, but whatever, Nvidia makes them available to all of us. I personally chose an Nvidia-based video card for the sole reason that Nvidia provided good Linux drivers. Many of us reward Nvidia with our business for their support of the platform we prefer to work on.

Now, because ATI has chosen not to provide an equal level of support for their customers, a growing demand for Linux drivers for ATI cards is left unfilled. Open source developers are currently working hard to fill that void. Nothing personal against an ATI video card owners (I'm one too, with my iBook G4), but I wish the OSS devs wouldn't do it.

If OSS devs succeed in making drivers that work with X.org in a way that is superior to what Nvidia is able to do, then I think demand among Linux users will shift away from Nvidia hardware, and towards ATI hardware. I'm not a zealot for Nvidia, but I don't feel that ATI should be rewarded with more hardware sales (and likewise Nvidia punished), when they declined to support Linux users from the beginning.

[ace2005]

I also have an other problem : after a long period of use of Xorg with xcompmgr, the server become really slow and take all the cpu and the memory and is slow as hell.
The speed come back to normal if i quit and relaunch xcompmgr but the memory use doesn't decrease.
For example now Xorg uses 427mo of RES memory as shown in top.

Its caused by shadows, turn them off and it runs fine :)

[poofyhairguy]

This frustrates me.

Desktop Linux is a small market, no doubt, but here's what I see happening. For a long time now, Nvidia has released closed source drivers for Linux users. Maybe they are intended for graphics professionals, but whatever, Nvidia makes them available to all of us. I personally chose an Nvidia-based video card for the sole reason that Nvidia provided good Linux drivers. Many of us reward Nvidia with our business for their support of the platform we prefer to work on.

Now, because ATI has chosen not to provide an equal level of support for their customers, a growing demand for Linux drivers for ATI cards is left unfilled. Open source developers are currently working hard to fill that void. Nothing personal against an ATI video card owners (I'm one too, with my iBook G4), but I wish the OSS devs wouldn't do it.

If OSS devs succeed in making drivers that work with X.org in a way that is superior to what Nvidia is able to do, then I think demand among Linux users will shift away from Nvidia hardware, and towards ATI hardware. I'm not a zealot for Nvidia, but I don't feel that ATI should be rewarded with more hardware sales (and likewise Nvidia punished), when they declined to support Linux users from the beginning.

A few comments on This:

1. ATI is not all evil in this respect. In fact, the reason I have mentioned the ATI 92xx cards so many times in this thread is because its an example of where ATI does not suck. ATI released the specs for all of their cards that are of the 92xx series or lower. That means that for all these cards (including the medium powerful 8500) ATI gave the OSS community what they want the MOST from card makers- just the specs. In fact, without the 9200 it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the Xorg developers to make a mature framework (like XGL) because only with the 9200's drivers can they sufficiently bug test. The OSX developers get full access to the specs of the cards they ship and thats part of the reason that OS's GUI framework kicks *** - they can get to the bottom of problems. If we only had the Nvidia cards no one would ever know if some new bug was due to their closed drivers or due to the open code- there can be no process of elimination. The second most powerful set of cards with open drivers is the weak Intel intergrated cards- bleh. The entire framework is being built on the assumption that people have the 92xx card at first because otherwise NO progress could be made.

2. For many in the open source community Nvidia's closed drivers are almost worse than no drivers at all (because a lack of drivers would drive development to reverse engineer these cards to have open soruce drivers). Just from a pratical standpoint, its kinda is cool that with a 9200 Ubuntu gives you the best drivers possible out of the box while if you have Nvidia cards you have to drop to the command line to get them to work. Plus the Nvidia drivers introduce all kinds of hacks to the Xorg.conf file that makes it so that it would be almost impossible to make a decent GUI to configure that thing for all users (which is something that is really missing on the Linux desktop). For example- on my 6600 GT I added many things to my Xorg.conf to get Xinerama-ish dual screen support that are WAY different from how to get Xinerama on every other driver out there (including the closed source ATI one). For a lot of OSS people, just giving the community drivers is not enough. Xcompmgr has been accerated by the Nvidia drivers for almost a year, but development has not happened since JANUARY because those in charge did not want to(and could not) build a eye candy framework on top of these closed drivers. I might be wrong, but I'm sure there is at least one big Xserver developer that if he/she had to pick between a wonderful GUI framework built on closed drivers (Vista and OSX style) and the the current very ugly implementation build on barely working open drivers they would pick the second option. Some people have REALLY big hold ups about this open source thing.

3. Many people already have newer ATI cards when they get into open operating systems. Whats wrong with these people reverse engineering the cards to make hardware they have work? Thats how SOOOO many things in Linux get their drivers, but few people ever comment on why reverse engineering that promise controller card is bad. Whats the real difference there?

4. How good are Nvidia's PowerPC drivers for Linux? Or Nvidia's Itanium drivers for Linux? Open drivers are needed so that hardware support is availible on every supported Linux desktop system.

That said I have an Nvidia card now. But if next year the 92xx gives me the best eye candy I will buy one of them. My decision won't hurt Nvidia that much as their emphasis on the Lin