KDE 3.4 transparency

anarhistu · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 7:44 am Post subject: KDE 3.4 transparency

I understand that kde 3.4 supports real transparency (not that bitmap simulations that I have seen till now).

Is this true?And has anyone managed to get real transparent windows?

I would like to know what version of x I need for this.

Thanks,
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Earthwings · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 7:50 am Post subject:

IIRC you need x11-misc/xcompmgr, x11-misc/transset, >= xorg-x11-6.8.0 and a section

TheRAt · Veteran Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 1580

Works fine here with xorg-x11-6.8.2...

You might like to look at these instructions at the Gentoo-Wiki
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anarhistu · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 8:47 am Post subject:

Thanks for the replies, ppl.
I'll look into the wiki for documentation.
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nxsty · Veteran Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 1556 Location: .se

kmare · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:55 pm Post subject:

yes... it has a build in composition manager.. and it works great.. the only thing I can't do is running 3d apps having the compmgr running or X will crash... I'm on an nvidia card btw...

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

gregw · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:00 pm Post subject:

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

lenk · Apprentice Joined: 08 Mar 2004 Posts: 211

This is what I did :

add this into /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
Option "RENDER" "Enable"
EndSection

Than enable kde composite manager. It is serious eye candy, now I don't need to buy a mac, but there is still a lacking of good mac expose program in linux. The X composite is quite slow at times, probably will improve in the next update.
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anarhistu · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:15 am Post subject:

Ok, I couldn't find the kde composite manager.Where do i look for it?

Does it work better with the xorg xorg composite manager?
I mean, xcompmgr and transset....
Or should I use kde's built in??

Is it accelerated by the graphics card?
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Levi · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Posts: 107

You can find it in the kde control center->window behaviour->translucency.
I tried it, but I can't work with it, the system becomes very slow over time.
besides, this adds shadows to gdesklets, superkaramba-themes and osd-displays which looks really stupid...

Btw.: you can get glx support with composite enabled by adding
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
to the device-section of your graphic card. At least for my nvidia-card this works.

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

Levi · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Posts: 107

jfb3 · Apprentice Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 242

nbkolchin · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:00 am Post subject:

My experience with KDE kompmgr (xcompmgr is same bullshit):

Most 3D applications crash kompmgr/xcompmgr.
Some SDL applications (wesnoth) crash kompmgr/xcompmgr.
wmdock applets work strange: random color background.
Blender/Maya work, but parts of desktop rise on top the window at random time.
X11 can go in hard freeze at any time.
mplayer XV output don't work.

So, "Composite" is unusable at present time.

Hardware:

Dolio · l33t Joined: 17 Jun 2002 Posts: 650

kompmgr is a fork of xcompmgr with some patches to make it work better/have more configuration options. xcompmgr hasn't been modified in a while, so it's almost certainly better to use kompmgr if you're using KDE.

Both kompmgr and xcompmgr are relatively slow on all but some of the fastest cards today. I have a GeForce3, which should have enough horsepower to draw transparent windows, but moving anything bigger than a terminal tends to lag. Render acceleration just isn't up to snuff for this stuff, even with nVidia's drivers.

There was recently a story on dot.kde.org about a guy going to work for Trolltech specifically to work on interesting new graphical technologies for Qt and KDE. Hopefully he or someone else will lead to a better composite manager being included in KDE in the future. I'd really like to see something like Luminocity on the KDE end, where the composite manager is embedded in the window manager (prevents needless duplication of information and communication issues between the cm and wm), and which uses OpenGL for the drawing (way faster on almost everything, and allows for more visually pleasing effects; of course, nVidia will have to solve the freezes caused by using glx and composite together before I can actually use such a beast).

Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to hack up something like that right now.

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Tlaloc · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:27 am Post subject:

For me at the moment it has also too much quirks. It is also quite slow and the screen sometimes isn't redrawn properly, or maximized windows are not shown totally. What are your expriences with memory usage? For me after a bit of work it goes from my normally used 120 to over 300 MByte. But I suppose that translucency and shadows inherenty are memory hungry technologies.
Nethertheless I am eager to see further evolutions of this in KDE and Xorg as I really could like it

and if it wasn't for the momentary slowlyness translucency for me are a plus also in usability somehow, not only eye candy.

Bye, Valentin.

echo6 · Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2003 Posts: 587

Grrr, got translucency working fine on my other laptop with a nvidia graphics card, but the one with an ati card keeps crashing compmngr on loading up KDE and thus it gets disabled. I also get an error "no damage extension". What ever that means?