HOWTO: Making your windows look super sweet in Hoary (compositing)

[raid517]

Well I followed all the advice I could find - and I still can't get this to work properly. I get something as in a desktop where everything is transparent - including the desktop itself. Also I don't get dropshadows, so much as 'seeing double.' That is to say that I simply see my text in duplicate with a dark version of my text appaering to sit on top of an only slightly lighter version.

In other words my desktop is a complete mess.

Can anyone offer any advice, or see anything in my xorg.conf file that I might be doing wrong?

xorg.conf

GJ

[QCompson]

Just wanted to add my experiences with the Nvidia driver, Render Accel, and eye-candy.

With a FX5900, I had apt-installed nvidia driver, renderaccel, and drop-shadowy goodness all cooperating well, but glx didn't work.

WIth a ti4200 in the same system, I manually installed the nvidia driver, which allowed me to get glx working, but renderaccel leads to periodic freezes (everything freezes, mouse moves).

Ti4200's don't seem to like Render Accel. Hoary's nvidia drivers don't seem to like glx. I spend more time messing around with nvidia drivers than anything else on my linux installs.

[raid517]

Pah... it aint all it's cracked up to be. I think this is a fetaure that still needs a lot of work.

GJ

[mgor]

Guys, you don't have to have drop-shadows with xcompmgr. Just run xcompmgr -fF instead of xcompmgr -cfF and you'll have creamy compositing goodness without annoying shadows.

or you'll just run xcompmgr -cCfF:

-C When -c is specified, attempts to avoid painting shadows on panels and docks.

updated screenshot: http://joshua.haninge.kth.se/~mgoransson/composite.png

[poofyhairguy]

With a FX5900, I had apt-installed nvidia driver, renderaccel, and drop-shadowy goodness all cooperating well, but glx didn't work.

I think that glx won't work on any Linux system with xcompmgr.

[mgor]

hm, every time i right click and chose "save target as" in firefox, xcompmgr dies with the message "Segmentation fault". that's a weird bug.

[faqpete]

Just wanted to add my experiences with the Nvidia driver, Render Accel, and eye-candy.

With a FX5900, I had apt-installed nvidia driver, renderaccel, and drop-shadowy goodness all cooperating well, but glx didn't work.

WIth a ti4200 in the same system, I manually installed the nvidia driver, which allowed me to get glx working, but renderaccel leads to periodic freezes (everything freezes, mouse moves).

Ti4200's don't seem to like Render Accel. Hoary's nvidia drivers don't seem to like glx. I spend more time messing around with nvidia drivers than anything else on my linux installs.

Hoary's nvidia driver like glx!
Just open /etc/X11/xorg.conf (with sudo!), take a look @ Section "Device" and add there following line: Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
That should work
Hope this helps

faqpete

[hamster2k3]

mmm there must be a way to make it work nicely with ATI. Otherwise it sucks!

Under a MAC these effects works perfectly with an ATI card.
But I know you will probably say its not the same OS and not the same X server (right?) and not even the same tools.

But do they have the same drivers as us ? Or is it something developped by apple ?

Also, anyone here who's using a Mac and Ubuntu maybe and who tried this ?
Do you have the same problem ? Basically you should... but just to make sure!

[goldfish]

Sweet how-to, i have had no trouble with it so far, using it a while now.

Here is my current desktop

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~goldfish/Screenshot-3.png

thanks for the info

[poofyhairguy]

mmm there must be a way to make it work nicely with ATI. Otherwise it sucks!

No, its still pretty cool. Drop shadows worked with my ATI card.

Under a MAC these effects works perfectly with an ATI card.
But I know you will probably say its not the same OS and not the same X server (right?) and not even the same tools.

But do they have the same drivers as us ? Or is it something developped by apple ?

Also, anyone here who's using a Mac and Ubuntu maybe and who tried this ?
Do you have the same problem ? Basically you should... but just to make sure!

OSX has better ATI drivers thatn Linux.