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

[arnoct]

(NOTE: THIS ONLY WORKS IN HOARY, DOES NOT WORK IN WARTY. Also, since I use an nvidia card, I'm not sure how well this will work in ATI. I've put in some ATI instructions that I've read but I'm not 100% sure if they'd work.)

I've spent the last day and a half trying to get compositing working in ubuntu. This is actually an amalgamation of a bunch of guides I've found; I shouldn't be given full credit for this.

The first thing you need to do is install xcompmgr and transset. These are found in the hoary universe repositories, if you havent already done so, enable the universe repo in your /etc/apt/sources.list. Its not very hard to do this, search the forums for how to do it

sudo apt-get install xcompmgr transset

xcompmgr is the composite manager (the program/extension that makes things look pretty) and transset sets windows transparencies.

Now, the next thing you have to do is actually enable compositing. This is done via a simple edit of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the following section after the "module" section:

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

This tells xorg to enable compositing. Now, just so you know, unless you have a good video card, compositing most likely slow down xorg. Apparantly nvidia cards fare better than ati cards, since you can enable acceleration (which we'll do later) which'll actually make x use your video card for rendering.

As I said earlier, if you have an nvidia card it'll run better. I'm assuming you've already installed the nvidia binary drivers and such, if you haven't then do so. Add the following lines to the "device" section:

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

"RenderAccel" is actually an option you should already have if you're running an nvidia card, but I've included it incase you haven't put it in yet. I'm pretty sure this only works on nvidia cards; can someone tell me if there's an equivelant for ati?

"AllowGLXWithComposite" is a command that allows you to use OpenGL while compositing is running. Apparantly it can be buggy, though, so if you have problems you might want to disable compositing in your xorg.conf whenever you want to use opengl (just comment out the compositing option with #)

Now, if you have an ati card, add these lines instead:

        Option          "backingstore"              "true"
	Option 		"AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"

According to a cached google page, backingstore is "used to enable the server's support for backing store, a mechanism by which pixel data for occluded window regions is remembered by the server thereby alleviating the need to send expose events to X clients when the data needs to be redisplayed."

(Since I don't own an ati card, I apologize if any of my facts are incorrect. If someone with an ati card can correct me, I'll make sure to update this.)

OK, now for the really fun part. We're going to actually set it so compositing is enabled when you start GNOME. Go to system -> preference -> sessions. Go to startup programs, and click "add."

Now, before I continue, I'm going to explain a few of xcompmgr's options:

-c : enable shadows
-s : enable simple shadows
-fF : enable fadeins/fadeouts

You can mix-and-match those commands. For example, if you want just shadows, use xcompmgr -c. If you want simple shadows, use xcompmgr -s. If you want to enable shadows and fadeins, use xcompmgr -cfF. I wouldn't recommend using -cs; that'll probably break the program.

So, where it asks you for the command, enter xcompmgr and then the argument. For example, if you'd like to enable shadows and fadeins/fadeouts, you'd enter:

xcompmgr -cfF

Finally, in the order, change it to 0. This'll make sure it's the first thing that GNOME runs. Apparantly things run much better this way.

Alright! Now you can restart X (ctrl+alt+backspace), log back in, and you should have compositing running!

Using Transset

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

Have fun!

(By the way, I'm running xcompmgr and transset half-decently on a 32mb nvidia card, but I'm only using fadein/fadeout. Your mileage may vary.)

[flange]

Thanks, arnoct.

The HOWTO worked perfectly on my system. Performance is fine with GNOME; it's definitely useable.

One problem so far: xcompmgr died on me for some reason a few minutes ago. It went away gracefully; I just noticed that I was no longer getting drop shadows, so it wasn't a big deal.

Anyway, my system specs, just in case any of you are wondering about performance:

Athlon XP 2500
512MB
60GB 7200RPM
Nvidia GF FX 5600
2.6.10-k7 kernel
nvidia 1.0.6629 driver package from apt-get

Once again, thanks for the HOWTO. I've been anxious to try this for quite awhile.

--Sorry, I should have mentioned that I'm using "xcompmgr -cfF". I might ditch the fading, as I wish it were a little quicker. I don't know if this is a performance issue or a configuration issue. I'm thinking it's the latter for me.

[HungSquirrel]

Is there a way not to make xcompmgr's shadows apply to gdesklets? Is there a way not to make xcompmgr maximize every window over the gnome-panel?

[dude2425]

Is there a way not to make xcompmgr's shadows apply to gdesklets? Is there a way not to make xcompmgr maximize every window over the gnome-panel?

IIRC, gdesklets has a transluecency option to use your own transparency. I don't remember, and I havent even tried it yet, but it's worth a shot maybe.

Just do a quick "killall gnome-panel" to reload the gnome panels. It should work just fine after that. Also, if you're having trouble with your terminal window not responding after you did that, then open a new one and type "killall `whatever terminal you use`"

I hope this helps a little.

[TravisNewman]

if you have xcompmgr start up at gnome login you won't have that problem.

[arnoct]

Yeah, it's a known bug that xcompmgr makes windows overlap the gnome panel, afaik the only way to fix it is to make sure it's the first thing loaded (order 0)

[edit] Oh, also, just FYI you don't need a "boss" system to run compositing: I had a few issues with shadows, but fading is working fine using the following specs:

Celeron 667
~480mb ram
4gb hdd
nVidia GeForce2 32mb
Latest 386 kernel
Latest nvidia drivers in the universe repo

[azelter]

Come on then, lets see some screen shots!

[HungSquirrel]

Pardon my ignorance: how does one load xcompmgr before the rest of Gnome?

[Julius]

Pardon my ignorance: how does one load xcompmgr before the rest of Gnome?

Order "0" will make xcompmgr load first.

This HOWTO works perfectly Too bad my computer is so old that I can't use those shadows, everything gets slower.

[kingofhell]

it just didnt work for me
help pls

root@ubuntu:/home/tianbo # apt-get install xcompmgr transset
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  transset: Depends: libxcomposite1 but it is not installable
            Depends: libxdamage1 but it is not installable
            Depends: libxfixes3 but it is not installable
  xcompmgr: Depends: libxcomposite1 but it is not installable
            Depends: libxdamage1 but it is not installable
            Depends: libxfixes3 but it is not installable
E: Broken packages