Desktop effects with intel 945

[Duncan]

David posted on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:36:19 +0200 as excerpted:

> 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 :-)

Thanks.  The problem for clients that don't parse HTML (for security, 
philosophical or other reasons... FWIW I consider both valid, and I could 
write perhaps a hundred line post on the subject, but I won't) is that 
while the dual-format is traditional, and it'd be simple enough to simply 
post the HTML version only when it's the only one, unfortunately, /some/ 
clients post the real message in the HTML part, but only a dummy message 
in the plain text part.  Thus, when clients set to plain text (or that 
only parse plain text to begin with) choose to show only the plain text 
part unless the HTML part is the only one there, sometimes that means 
they're only showing the dummy.  So implementations must choose between 
showing both, with the ugliness that entails, or potentially only showing 
a dummy part if they only show the plain text part.

But it's reasonably well known that google defaults to HTML mail, 
unfortunately... and a lot of folks don't realize the problem until 
they're asked... I /do/ try to make it a reasonable request, and generally 
do my best to answer the question (as you saw) while I'm at it.

> 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.

Absolutely agreed.  FWIW, window translucency can be useful at times as 
well.

> 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?*

I don't mind you asking at all.  But while I use a couple GTK apps (firefox 
and pan, which use on this list, BTW, reading it and replying thru 
gmane.org's list2news interface), I don't have Gnome on the system, only 
gtk+.  (Gentoo, compiled from sources, so every extra app or dependency I 
don't particularly need is a lot of avoidable work to keep upgraded... in 
this way Gentoo encourages the good security practice of not having 
installed what one isn't actually going to use that much.) As such, my 
Gnome knowledge is all either real old (Gnome 1) or second hand -- but I 
spend quite a bit of time keeping up with developments in the FLOSS 
communtiy, and just as I happened to have read the info on the kwin/opengl 
functionality controversy, so I happen to have read enough to I believe 
answer this reasonably.

If you look again, I said it's specific effects that have the issue, *NOT* 
all effects.  Turn those off (and possibly turn on others in their place), 
and it should work reasonably well.  That means going thru the list of 
each individual effect, toggling it off, and seeing if that helps the 
speed, etc. If it does, leave it off, and perhaps try a different effect 
(there's several different window close effects to choose from, for 
instance, explode, fall apart, fade out, etc).  Once you get a set that 
both works on your hardware and contains the functionality you need... 
you're set.

This is all in kcontrol/systemsettings (the kde3 name, kcontrol, was more 
accurate, as it's NOT in general system settings, but rather, both user 
and kde specific settings... at least as shipped by KDE, some 
distributions add some other modules and there's a couple exceptions, like 
date & time, that can be set globally if kde is configured to allow it), 
workspace appearance and behavior, desktop effects.  The all effects tab 
is where each individual effect can be toggled.

I also mentioned setting the speed (fade effects, etc), from normal, to 
very fast or even to instant.  That's on the general (first) tab.

As for starting with effects disabled, yes, that's a bit irritating, but 
there's a hotkey that can be used to toggle them.  It's alt-shift-F12 by 
default, but I remapped it to meta-s here.  (Meta aka winkey, I remapped 
most kwin functions to winkey shortcuts, windows functions, windows key... 
easier to remember than arbitrary function keys...)  Once you either 
change the hotkey to something you can remember, or memorize the default 
one, it's easy enough to toggle effects back on as about the first thing 
you do once you login.

However, if you want, you /can/ actually switch to compiz for KDE's window 
manager instead of kwin.  You lose all the special stuff kwin does, of 
course -- the special window and applications settings (aka window rules, 
in kcontrol) are kwin, of course, so if you use a different window 
manager, any special window rules you setup under kde no longer work.  But 
I suspect compiz has its own special window rules setup, tho I don't know 
as I've never used it.

Also, there some sort of kde specific compiz config applet available, I've 
read, as well, tho again, I've been happy enough with kwin to have never 
needed to use it so I don't know the details.  I do know for sure that 
there's a number of kde/compiz specific styles, or whatever they're 
called, available on kdelook, as I've come across them while looking for 
other stuff.

So it is indeed quite possible to run compiz as the window manager for kde, 
with enough people doing it that not only is there a specific confi applet 
for it, but there's kde/compiz specific color schemes/styles/whatever. 
=:^)  If you're considering that, I'd ask in the kubuntu forums (I don't 
know what the kubuntu package status for the config applet might be, or 
even what it's named), and also check kdelook.

Meanwhile, to answer the question about compiz directly, compiz implements 
things differently, actually using assembly code in some case, instead of 
calling opengl to do the work.  And they went thru some of this same stuff 
earlier and now work much closer with the xorg driver folks, while the 
kwin people are just starting to get into it and haven't developed that 
close working relationship with the xorg folks yet.  So yes, compiz should 
work reasonably well, and in fact, I believe it's working rather better 
for these Intel devices right now than kwin.

> [...]

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

As I said, absolutely no problem with it from my perspective.  The only 
problem might be that people answering here aren't likely to know the 
gnome specific details, but I do believe the info I'm posting to be valid, 
it's just that I /don't/ know the details.

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

Yes, tho there's a particular bug in that functionality right now (in the 
interplay between pan and kde/kmail, the bug is actually in kde's mailto: 
functionality), so I sort of have to do it round about. (I post to the 
list then copy that when I get it back from the list, in an email to 
you... if it takes a bit for the list to post it back to me... I could 
possibly forget to copy it back to your email.)

-- 
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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