Re: Translucency in KDE too slow (Composite)

["[KS]" <lists04@fastmail.fm>]

Florian Kulzer wrote:
> [KS] wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I was trying to enable translucency(in KDE) on my debian unstable box.
>> After editing the xorg.conf for using the composite extension, I
>> restarted X and it worked. However, I was a bit dismayed with the
>> performance. It is so slow that I can actually "see" that KDE is trying
>> to redraw a window. Are there any specific settings that I need to
>> adjust to get a better performance?
>>
>> My system is a PIV 2.0GHz based machine with 256+512MB RAM and a Nvidia
>> Geforce 5700LE (256MB vRAM), KDE is 3.5.2.
>>
>> ii  libxcomposite1   6.9.0.dfsg.1-6   X off-screen compositing library
>> ii  libxdamage1      6.9.0.dfsg.1-6   X region 'damage' library
> 
> You need the proprietary nvidia driver (version 1.0-8xxx), then you can
> activate the following two options in the device section of your
> graphics card:
> 
> Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
> Option     "RenderAccel"   "true"
> 
> I just checked the nvidia website and it seems that there was a new
> version of the driver (1.0-8756) released yesterday which enables these
> options by default. AFAIK you have to set them yourself with older drivers.
> 
> If it works it will make all translucency/compositing effects much
> faster; if it does not work it can lock up your computer. (Normally you
> can still log in via ssh and kill X, or you can use "at" to make sure X
> will get killed after five minutes when you try it for the first time.)
> 

Thanks for the tip. I was already using the 1.0-8178 at that time, but
an apt-get update showed me that the new updates for nvidia drivers had
seeped in. After updating I tried and composite was crashing. I also
read somewhere that composite will be slow if used with TwinView enabled
(which I do for my two monitors).

The crashing was solved by changing the Driver   "keyboard" to "kbd" in
the InputDevice section of xorg.conf. The composite extension runs fine
now. No crashes. I tested with enabling the AllowGLXWithComposite and
RenderAccel on only one device and translucency features are being
displayed perfectly not only on the left screen but also on the right
screen!

However the translucency doesn't make the whole window translucent. Its
just the window decorations which become translucent! Is it really
possible to make the whole window translucent using X.org?

Thanks once again Florian.
/kds