KDE Desktop effects

[Bogus Zaba]

On 09/15/2012 03:40 PM, Duncan wrote:
> Bogus Zaba posted on Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:59:15 +0100 as excerpted:
>
>> I am not desperate to have all possible eye-candy operating, but I know
>> that my system is capable of reasonable performance with regard to stuff
>> like box-switching etc because it has worked before.
>>
>> The system has an nvidia GeForce 7300 card and I am using the nvidia
>> (proprietary) driver. The KDE is 4.5.5 under Slackware 13.37 which is
>> the best I can run under Slack 13.37 without making some other
>> significant system changes.
>>
>> Recently KDE allows me to use only the XRender compositing type which
>> provides a jerky experience if desktop effects are turned on. If I try
>> and switch to OpenGL I get "Failed to activate desktop effects using the
>> given config options" and it reverts to jerky Xrender. I have
>> re-installed the nvidia driver and am sure it is working OK because the
>> nvidia Server settings utility does what is expected (provides a cursor
>> shadow for example). This utility also reports all sorts of OpenGL
>> parameters and so it looks like OpenGL should work OK. Why is KDE not
>> playing nicely?
> What kernel version?  What xorg-server version?  Did you upgrade those
> since it worked properly?  What about your nvidia driver?  If the rest of
> your system is as old as the now two years old kde 4.5 (tho 4.5.5 isn't
> quite that old... November/December), but you tried upgrading either the
> kernel or the video driver (or xorg-server, but that's less likely to be
> upgraded on its own I'd guess), they're probably expecting something
> newer.
Kernel is 2.6.37.6 - as supplied with Slackware 13.37.
xorg-server seems to be 1.9.5 as supplied with Slackware 13.37.
The nvidia driver is 295.33 as supplied by the semi-official 
"Slackbuilds.org" repository.

So none of the above are very recent upgrades - all about 1 year old.

As I was getting this information together I remembered that there was a 
published reliable way of upgrading to KDE 4.6.5 from 4.5.5 without 
making major changes to the system, so I went ahead and upgraded. All 
seems to have worked well - KDE reports that it is now at 4.6.5, but 
same message when I try and switch from Xrender to OpenGL for desktop 
effects.

>
> Of course if you upgrade your kernel, you need to rebuild your servantware
> drivers against the new kernel, but failing to do that usually results in
> not being able to get into X at all (or at least it did back shortly
> after the turn of the century when I last ran nVidia graphics, something
> I've stayed away from since due to their lack of cooperation with the
> FLOSS community), so /that/ shouldn't be the problem.
>
> Just to confirm.  There's an app called glxgears.  You can run it and see
> the gears still?  If so, you have at least /minimal/ glx
> (glx = (open)gl-X).  If not, your glx is broken.
Check - this works fine and glxgears reports about 1700 fps.
> And on the same (third/advanced) tab of the desktop effects applet, IDR
> if kde 4.5 had it or if it was added later, but if you have a checkbox
> for opengl shaders, try unchecking that.  Older hardware/software didn't
> work well with that.
Here are the options on this tab (in KDE 4.6.5):
* Disable functionality tests (right under the compositing type 
drop-down list. This is checked.
* Keep window thumbnails (This is set to "never")
* Scale method (Set to "crisp" rather than "smooth")
* OpenGL mode (Set to "Fallback" rather than "Texture from pixmap" or 
"shared memory"
* Enable direct rendering (Checked)
* Use vsync (also checked)

I have played randomly with many of these but no combination that I have 
tried has fixed the won't-switch-to-OpenGL problem.

> Also, along about the kde 4.5 era, kwin was blacklisting certain
> combinations of hardware and drivers due to problems they've since worked
> out.  It's possible that whatever you're running is or was blacklisted.
> Check kwinrc (probably in ~/.kde/share/config/).  You may wish to try
> renaming that file (with kde not running of course) and starting kde/kwin
> to have it recreated "clean".
I did try renaming kwinrc in kde 4.5.5. This did not help either, but I 
will try with the newer 4.6.5 later on today.
> Finally, what window decoration are you running?  Some of those,
> particularly the customizations available on kdelook.org, etc. (as
> opposed to those shipped by kde), have been known to trigger various
> issues.  KDE's native oxygen decoration is one of the more challenging of
> the native/shipped decorations, so you might try one of the others.
> (Personally, I've run the kde2 decoration since... well... kde2, without
> the issues I sometimes see others mentioning for other decorations. But
> it's also not quite as featureful. YMMV.)
>
I was using "Modern system". I switched to "KDE2" but again this did not 
solve the problem.

We are expecting a new Slackware version any day now which will ship 
with KDE 4.8. I am inclined to wait now until this is released after 
which I will upgrade or fresh-install. Could well be that the upgrade 
will cure the problem. If not that will be the time to devote more time 
and effort to it.

Thanks for all your suggestions.
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