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

[poofyhairguy]

It almost works for me - it doesn't seem to crash X, but it does quite often fail to draw windows properly, especially when they resize themselves. But apart from that, it looks so good. Having background windows slightly transparent, making moving windows almost see-through, and with smooth transitions in between...

I've tried it and I like that it DOES things with its Kompmgr besides shadows and fading.

[suoko]

One silly question abour "renderaccel" option for nvidia drivers:
enabling this option freezes my PC as well as many others PCs. Is this due to an nvidia driver bug or a xorg bug? Or whatever?

[RAOF]

One silly question abour "renderaccel" option for nvidia drivers:
enabling this option freezes my PC as well as many others PCs. Is this due to an nvidia driver bug or a xorg bug? Or whatever?

They're closed source drivers, so no-one really knows.

But, given than the renderaccel option prints the warning "Enabling EXPERIMENTAL xrender support" to the xorg log, I'm guessing it's the nvidia drivers

[poofyhairguy]

One silly question abour "renderaccel" option for nvidia drivers:
enabling this option freezes my PC as well as many others PCs. Is this due to an nvidia driver bug or a xorg bug? Or whatever?

Its the Nvidia driver. One day Nvidia's renderaccel will be replaced by EXA. Till then we have to deal with its quirks.

[oobuntoo]

I used to have lockup problem when enabling renderaccel. Replacing my old nvidia card with 6600gt and the problem was gone. Shadow and transparency under KDE seem stable and fast enough for most part, but not stable enough for long term use. Other problems include screen artifacts when logging in, maximizing window to take up full screen, and playing video. Anyone know what is responsible for these artifacts? Is it Xorg, kde built-in xcompmgr, nvidia driver, or combinations of these? I don't recall seeing screen artifacts when using xcompmgr and trannset under gnome.

[poofyhairguy]

I used to have lockup problem when enabling renderaccel. Replacing my old nvidia card with 6600gt and the problem was gone. Shadow and transparency under KDE seem stable and fast enough for most part, but not stable enough for long term use. Other problems include screen artifacts when logging in, maximizing window to take up full screen, and playing video. Anyone know what is responsible for these artifacts? Is it Xorg, kde built-in xcompmgr, nvidia driver, or combinations of these? I don't recall seeing screen artifacts when using xcompmgr and trannset under gnome.

Its the composite extension within Xorg.

And yes, a faster card wil more RAM almost always does the job.

[hectorC]

Hello,

I followed your how-to and when I run xcompmgr I get the error "No composite extension". I have a nvidia 6600 and the only way I found to make it work was adding the "Extensions" section for unsupported cards. This is part of my xrog.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT]"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "NoLogo"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

Any idea why?

Thanks in advance!

Hector.

[hectorC]

Hello,

I followed your how-to and when I run xcompmgr I get the error "No composite extension". I have a nvidia 6600 and the only way I found to make it work was adding the "Extensions" section for unsupported cards. This is part of my xrog.conf:


Hector.

Forget it! My mistake.... I thought it said that the step where you add the "Extensions" section was only for unsopported cards.

Thanks anyway.

Hector.

[poofyhairguy]

Forget it! My mistake.... I thought it said that the step where you add the "Extensions" section was only for unsopported cards.

Thanks anyway.

Hector.

So everything is ok? Good.

[poofyhairguy]

Ok. Here is the GUI for Xcompmgr I promised. It was made for Mandrake, but after some fighting its an Ubuntu program now. Its attached to this post.

Enjoy!!!