[RFC] Enforcing Compositing

[Lubos Lunak]

On Sunday 20 of February 2011, Martin Gräßlin wrote:
> Let's turn the question around: why should the user be able to enable or
> disable compositing?

 Since, as experience shows, compositing is nowhere near a perfect world?

> What would be a valid reason to do so?

- Intel releases a new driver that "technically" works fine but causes visual 
glitches.
- User is running on batteries and really likes those 10 bonus minutes more 
than compositing.

 Let's turn the question around once more: Why shouldn't the user be able to 
disable compositing? As you said in your first mail, compositing should be 
enforced only if supported, so non-composited mode needs to be supported too 
anyway. The benefit of removing a checkbox seems far too small compared to 
all the potential trouble.

> And keep in mind: with Wayland it will be impossible to turn off
> compositing, same in GNOME Shell, Unity and Mac OS X (don't know about
> Windows).

 Well, that could be a nice selling point of KWin for all those disappointed 
GNOME Shell users, wouldn't it?

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz