Desktop effects with intel 945

[David]

Thank you very much for your thorough reply, Duncan. I am writing now
in plain text only, but last time I did not consciously send the HTML
version, it is gmail's default: actually in the XXI century :-) , most
email clients can understand the double plain text-HTML posting, and
can hide the HTML if necessary :-)

Well, I think desktop effects are still important, not only for
eye-candy, but also for productivity: the preview of minimized
windows, the preview when switching with Alt+Tab, the "Exposé", etc.
Therefore (and I am aware this is not the best question to ask in this
list), while the problems of kwin in the Intel card persist, do you
recommend me to use Ubuntu (with gnome, I mean)? *Does compiz suffer
from the same problems?*

Also, I see that such kwin's problems are specially annoying with gtk
applications; and, although I love KDE, I use a few gtk applications
during the biggest part of the time :-) : firefox, thunderbird, gimp,
geany, etc. A KDE application that I use and has no decent equivalent
in gnome would be Kile. *Which run better (or worse :-) ): gnome
applications in KDE (I could also ask "gtk applications in KDE", it is
not exactly the same question), or KDE applications in gnome?*

Sorry if you found the gnome's questions unsuitable for this list.

Thank you very much in advance,

David
PS: For convenience, can you please Cc any replies to me?

>
> [PS: For convenience, can you refrain from posting the HTML version next
> time?  You may or may not see how it jumbles together, there, and I almost
> missed your PS as a result.  Plain text works best on the lists.]
>
>
> You've been hit with the fallout from a rather controversial bug.  You can
> google it if you want and get the response straight from the KWIN folks,
> but I don't have the time to look it up ATM as I'm headed for work.
>
> Basically, what happened is this.  With kde 4.5, some OpenGL accelerated
> effects were taken advantage of, IF AND ONLY IF the driver claims to
> support them.  KWin asks your graphics driver which OpenGL features it
> supports, and makes use of the features the driver claims it does support.
>
> Unfortunately, certain versions of the native xorg Intel drivers
> (especially, the native xorg Radeon drivers have similar but not as bad
> issues) make claims about features they really don't support, at least in
> hardware.  Some of these are implemented in software, some, buggily, in
> hardware.
>
> So KWin is simply taking the driver at its word when it says it supports a
> feature, and using it.  Unfortunately, this slows things down dramatically
> when it's all software/CPU implemented, as is the case sometimes.
>
> But the driver folks claim that many games test for functionality they
> don't actually use, at least not much, so making those claims allows
> certain games to run with better effects at reasonably high speeds, since
> they're not actually using what they test for much anyway.  Failing to
> make those claims would mean not supporting those games, or at least, not
> supporting certain effects on those games that actually work fine, in
> practice.
>
> So you see it's not quite all KDE/KWin's fault, not all xorg/driver folks,
> and not all the game people.  But the user is caught in between.
>
> Now that the controversy arose, the kwin and driver folks are talking a
> bit, and things should get a bit better.  Actually, they already are in
> some cases, IF you're running the newest xorg/kernel/drivers, just as
> you're running the latest KDE 4.5.1/4.5.2.  But the distributions freeze
> and start testing the xorg/kernel/drivers combo earlier in the cycle than
> KDE, apparently, so while they may ship with the newest KDE, the kernel/
> xorg/drivers combo isn't always synced well with it, and that's what
> happened here.
>
> By the 1H2011 edition, hopefully, the rest of the platform shipped by the
> distributions will be caught up, and things will be better.
>
> Meanwhile, experiment with toggling individual effects on and off.  You
> can likely find a combo that's faster, without turning off everything,
> because not every effect uses the same OpenGL features.  Also, try
> changing the effect speed, from normal, to shorter/faster, or to
> "instant".  That helped dramatically on my old Radeon 9200 series card
> (with an older kde4 tho) before I upgraded.
>
> And kwin actually does some checks before enabling things too, in addition
> to the claims.  That's why it's disabling effects at bootup, because it
> sees that not all is as it should be, so rather than leave someone with an
> unusuable desktop, it disables effects to start off with.  FWIW, I'm
> seeing similar disabled to start here on my Radeon hd4650 (the upgrade),
> but with effects like explosion off, things work fine on the Radeon, at
> least with the latest drivers/kernel/mesa/xorg/etc.
>
> [I read this list as news on gmane.org, not mail, and that one got sent but
> there's a bug in something and the mail I don't believe was sent, so I'm
> sending again.]
>
> --
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
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