I was about to dismiss this as non-doable, but reading some posts on a google search convinced me to try out compiz on etch, so I installed it, making a few recommended changes to /etc/X11/xorg.conf along the way.
I'm running etch, with all updates as of today. Hardware is a bit of a clunker: homebuilt Athlon 1.0 ghz, asus MB, Matrox G450 (16 megs video), plenty enough system ram (768 megs). xorg 7.2 possibly (or is it 7.1.1), with updated matrox driver (1.4.4). 3d has worked well for sometime. I gather that this is pretty much lowend hardware to work with compiz, but it *does* work. It is a bit slow, but the eye candy is there -- slide/pinch window, "shear" on a window, "wrap" the window over to the next available screen - stuff like that. On the other hand, it's not all that usable because the windows themselves are shrunk to about 1/2 their normal size, and I can't run them any more maximized than they already are. The kde taskbar is also shrunk to one half its normal size; in other words, it uses up the bottom 1/2 of the screen instead of using up all the bottom of the screen as it does normally. That makes for some applications like sylpheed incredibly hard to use. Also, other things slow down appreciably, like mplayer in a window. I haven't noticed much slowdown with 3d apps, although the only 3d app I routinely use is stellerium. It's simple enough that I use it as a test whenever I want to see how well dri is setup, and I don't do anything much with 3d acceleration beyond that -- but without it, stellarium feels like I'm running on an XT :(. There is also some 'bleed-through' in the dri --- for instance if I run glxgears and stellarium at the same time, I can see the gears rotating in the sky ;) - also it's noticeable when I run amarok (the visualizer is apparently using GL), although that is less noticeable and not really that big of an issue, and this is not a compiz issue, but more a driver one. I admittedly haven't done much beyond installing compiz and typing 'compiz --replace' on a konsole (after enabling composite extension in xorg.conf, of course) so I ask is this expected behavior? Am I "pushing it" as far as the expected performance of compiz? I saw the video, thought "wow" but upon trying it for the first time it is as if the tape broke :(. Anyone with similar hardware trying this? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED] change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]