[RFC] Enforcing Compositing

[Markus Slopianka]

> Since 4.2 we have enabled OpenGL based compositing by default and I was
> wondering if in 4.7 we should go the next step: disabling the possibility
> to turn compositing off if supported.
> 
> With Mesa 7.10 it seems that the driver problems (Mesa 7.8) which hit us in
> 4.5 are finally gone
> (...)
> What do you think about this idea?

Well, it's hard to predict the future. Drivers could get regressions again.

I think the problem is less the ability to turn off compositing, it's the wording.
IMO the "Enable desktop effects" checkbox should only apply to the actual effects but not 
the compositing support. I've seen people in forums who are not interested in shadows, 
transparent windows etc. They dislike "eye candy". What they don't get in some cases is 
that enabled compositing and all effects turned off should be better in most situations 
(unless the driver is broken).

For disabling compositing, people could use the "Advanced" tab with the new option "None" 
added to the "Compositing type" drop down menu.

> I would keep
> * the shortcut to suspend compositing
> * the dbus call to toggle compositing (might be useful for games and so on)

Could the shortcut call dbus? What I experienced when occasionally turning off composite 
support manually is that the shortcut does not flip the "composite switch" plasmoid and 
the shortcut always overrules the plasmoid which means that I can't turn it on again using 
the plasmoid.

Markus