Now that I have NVIDIA drivers, I can enable the XFWM compositor. It still works even without the NVIDIA drivers, but I wanted the drivers for other things too; OpenGL screensavers, games, etc.
Enabling the compositor is very easy, just a quick edit of the XOrg configuration file. To start a backup is always the way to go, before editing.
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup
sudo mousepad /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Then get right to the bottom and add these 3 lines.
Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection
Save the file and then you’re done.
Now I have nice transparent window decorations, transparent windows when they are moved …
Transparent windows when they are re-sized, and transparent pop-ups, which includes menus.
Now for a nice desktop to show off!
Does the compositing seriously have a software fallback? That’s awesome! I’ll have to have a look.
I think I may have been a little confusing by saying ‘without the NVIDIA drivers’
I should have said without the ‘restricted NVIDIA binaries’ or something similar.
Xubuntu automatically installs the open-source nv drivers, which I assume provide the capability to handle the compositing.
To my understanding the compositor does not have a software fallback.
I was under the impression that the nv drivers didn’t support anything like that. Hmm…
Nope, you’re actually right!
I’m writing this on a system only using the nv driver with
libxcomposite1installed and runningxcompmgras the compositor (I’m not running Xfce). It’s running beautifully!Thanks very much! I imagine that it’s basically running in a “software fallback” mode, or at least only using a bit of hardware acceleration. It is much more stable than using the full NVIDIA driver, I wonder why they haven’t enabled it by default!
Ah you beat me.
I reinstalled Xubuntu Dapper to be 100% sure. Yes, the compositing does work with the nv drivers only, but it gets quite laggy when doing anything!
It’s quite stable on my machine. But then I’m not using xcompmgr. I heard that xcompmgr was not being developed anymore? Giving way to others like Compiz/Beryl.
One other wierd thing I discovered is that I couldn’t get XFWM’s compositor to enable on Xubuntu Edgy at all. I don’t know if it was enabled when the package was built, or if something else is wrong.
I have just been using Beryl instead.
Yeah,
xcompmgrhasn’t been touched for about two years. However, it is handy for just doing some quick lightweight eye candy. Not something I’d use every day.The particular computer I’m running it on has problems with running the NVIDIA drivers. There’s about a 1-in-5 chance of
glxgearsgiving a “Segmentation Fault” error. Eventually, after about 10 minutes, the computer will crash. The problem’s been going on for over a year, so being able to do this compositing is quite cool because I can do it with thenvdriver, which is perfectly stable.I never really used xcompmgr all that much, before compiz came about, but it does have some good simple effects.
Good to hear it’s stable for you. Interesting that the nv performs better for you, than the NVIDIA binaries.
Score one for open-source development.
There’s a problem with the initial prefs file that disables the composite manager in Edgy. It can be fixed, see the following bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xfwm4/+bug/69602
I didn’t even notice that it had been disabled in Edgy.
Thanks for pointing that out, and linking the bug report!
how can i install this in winxp?
any ideas?
thankx
xfwm compositor uses EXA acceleration method. For me it was really slow until i used it, although compiz was fast in Gnome.
If you are experiencing the same problem add this to your Device section in xorg.conf:
Option “AccelMethod” “EXA”