Compiz System Requirements

[786souljah]

This could turn out to be a lame question however with some searching resulting in no answers, I come to the forums.

I am currently in the process of backing up old windows documents to fresh install ubuntu linux 8.04. Now... I know the install will work well with linux running perfectly as I've tried the LiveCD already. Here's the old junk it'll run on:

IBM Thinkpad T23 Laptop (No built in wireless)
CPU: 1.13Ghz
HD: ~30GB
RAM: 512MB

Thats probably the most important information. Here's the deal though, I'd like to apply some nice effects like transparencies and the like to the ubuntu interface and wonder, is my hardware reasonable to run it? I'm not looking at the cube or anything I KNOW will need a 3D card etc, just the nice simple things. Will this still be too intensive for the laptop ill be running ubuntu on?

Thank you very much for the help, and sorry in advance if this has been gone through already, my forum search skills must be lacking. Thank you once again!

[overdrank]

This could turn out to be a lame question however with some searching resulting in no answers, I come to the forums.

I am currently in the process of backing up old windows documents to fresh install ubuntu linux 8.04. Now... I know the install will work well with linux running perfectly as I've tried the LiveCD already. Here's the old junk it'll run on:

IBM Thinkpad T23 Laptop (No built in wireless)
CPU: 1.13Ghz
HD: ~30GB
RAM: 512MB

Thats probably the most important information. Here's the deal though, I'd like to apply some nice effects like transparencies and the like to the ubuntu interface and wonder, is my hardware reasonable to run it? I'm not looking at the cube or anything I KNOW will need a 3D card etc, just the nice simple things. Will this still be too intensive for the laptop ill be running ubuntu on?

Thank you very much for the help, and sorry in advance if this has been gone through already, my forum search skills must be lacking. Thank you once again!

Hi and I have a Acer laptop with 512 mb of memory and intel graphics and compiz runs nicely with Gutsy 7.10. I have a desktop with the intel graphics 32 mb dedicated and it uses the desktop effects but it is a little slow.
The point being that is depends more on the graphics in my opinion.

[786souljah]

Ah I see. Even with little additions like a transparency, would there be a large slowdown in terms of speed?

Also, lets say I'm dual-booting leaving Ubuntu with only 10 or 15 GBs of HD rather than wiping windows; would it affect compiz much? (I'm still one of the newbie migrators from windows so i'd like to keep it just incase i leave myself with no working OS )

[overdrank]

Ah I see. Even with little additions like a transparency, would there be a large slowdown in terms of speed?

Hi and I did not say that, I mean it depends on the graphics card and the amount of memory dedicated to the graphics.

Also, lets say I'm dual-booting leaving Ubuntu with only 10 or 15 GBs of HD rather than wiping windows; would it affect compiz much? (I'm still one of the newbie migrators from windows so i'd like to keep it just incase i leave myself with no working OS )

Should have no effect as that is partitioning the hard drive and not effecting resources of the system as far as graphics.

[786souljah]

Thanks a bunch! I guess I'll just install it and see how it runs. If it bogs the system down too much or doesn't run smooth i'll just remove it and that'll be the end of that =)

[Kevbert]

What video card are you using ? You can see if compiz will run by using compiz-check.

[Forlong]

Yeah, in fact, you left out the most important part in the hardware specs: the graphics chip.

And I'm afraid, it seems like all (?) T23 came with a S3 -- which would be really bad in terms of Compiz.

[786souljah]

I looked at my system information but it doesn't give information about a graphics chip. And well i guess if it is the S3 Super Savage which is with the t23's then I'm stuck? LOL, I knew it's an old laptop so i couldn't expect too much from it, just thought I could pump a little more out of it.

**EDIT**: Also, why is it that the S3 isn't too compatible with compiz; I read about a bug of some sort or has that been fixed but still doesn't have the 3d accelerators to do the job?

[Forlong]

Argh, sorry about the double post.

[Forlong]

I looked at my system information but it doesn't give information about a graphics chip.

You can use this to check: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=799070

Also, why is it that the S3 isn't too compatible with compiz

Because the people of S3 think Linux suck and did not support it properly.

I read about a bug of some sort or has that been fixed but still doesn't have the 3d accelerators to do the job?

Things may have improved. S3 has been bought by VIA which is itself in the process of sucking less in terms of Linux.
There are also open source people who try to reverse engineer drivers.

So there might be a chance Compiz will work on your laptop (sometimes).

That is one of the reasons I wrote Compiz-Check. It will tell us what the chances are.