Upgraded from 8.04 - Lucid: Can't get Desktop Effect/Compiz working

[klytu]

How can I check to be sure that there are no remnants left over that might be interfering?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troublesho...thRadeonDriver

Thanks, this was very helpful!

I purged the remnants of the proprietary fglrx drivers and reinstalled ati as per the linked page:

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
  sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon 
  sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
  sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
  sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then I also purged and reinstalled compiz with:

sudo apt-get remove --purge compiz python-compizconfig compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins compiz-gnome compiz-core libdecoration0 compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra fusion-icon

and:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall compiz python-compizconfig compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins compiz-gnome compiz-core libdecoration0 compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra fusion-icon

Now I'm able to get desktop effects and compiz running, but it's painfully slow and almost unusable. Since the effects are very smooth running off a Lucid Live-CD, there's still something wrong; but this is significant progress.

Again, thanks so much for your help. If you think of anything else I could try to get compiz running better, please post it. Meanwhile, I'll keep plugging away to see if I can figure out what needs to be adjusted.

[realzippy]

Have you tried to disable KMS (suggested in post8 ) ?:

Since Lucid uses KMS for ATI cards,you can disable KMS if the driver is not working properly by creating a file:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf

with this content:

options radeon modeset=0


Have to reboot of course....
and might need a xorg.conf then (test it,I do not know...)
Creating xorg.conf:

sudo Xorg -configure

[klytu]

Have you tried to disable KMS (suggested in post8 ) ?:

Since Lucid uses KMS for ATI cards,you can disable KMS if the driver is not working properly by creating a file:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf

with this content:

options radeon modeset=0

Yes, I already did try this and it helped somewhat. Average FPS in glxgears went from about 11000 fps to 16000 fps

Have to reboot of course....
and might need a xorg.conf then (test it,I do not know...)
Creating xorg.conf:

sudo Xorg -configure

I'll give that a try later today. I suspect my performance issue with Compiz is related to this error:

WARNING: Application calling GLX 1.3 function "glXCreatePixmap" when GLX 1.3 is not supported! This is an application bug!

I googled and searched around - many have reported this error after a distribution upgrade. I've tried reinstalling the kernel, but the error persists. I'll work on it later today and over the next day or two as time permits and post back what I come up with. If I can't locate the issue by then, I'll likely give up and do a clean installation.

Again, thanks so much for your help!

[realzippy]

"...clean installation"

Don't want to discourage;maybe you have the best 3D perormance with catalyst 9.3
on ubuntu 8.10....my neighbor sticks with 8.10 because he wants snappy desktop effects
running an old ATI 9500 chipset on a laptop;since Jaunty it got worse (downgrading Xorg was a workaround,don't know if that is still possible).So good luck!

[klytu]

"...clean installation"

Don't want to discourage;maybe you have the best 3D perormance with catalyst 9.3
on ubuntu 8.10....my neighbor sticks with 8.10 because he wants snappy desktop effects
running an old ATI 9500 chipset on a laptop;since Jaunty it got worse (downgrading Xorg was a workaround,don't know if that is still possible).So good luck!

Yeah I can relate. I definitely had much better performance in 8.04 with ATI's proprietary driver which is why I stuck with it for so long. But I had installed Kubuntu 10.04 a couple of months ago as an experiment and the desktop effects worked very well. The graphics performance and compiz effects from the LiveCd are also more than adequate. So I'm sure that the open source driver will work fine for my purposes; I just don't know why it's performing so dismally after an upgrade.

[klytu]

Just when I was about to give up on this for the night, I managed to get everything working! I noticed an old profile config file for compiz that was left over from before the upgrade; it contained all the desktop effects settings I liked and would load automatically whenever compiz ran. Some of those settings were no longer valid or had different names in the newer version of compiz that Lucid uses. I wondered if that profile was still being automatically loaded ... and it was. I reset to the default profile in the Preferences section of CompizConfig Settings Manager and voila - everything works fine!

Thanks again, realzippy, for your help!