MWM looking for Bling/Compiz/Emerald/KDE3 love
Sunday November 18, 2007
Dear Lazyweb,
I would LOVE to have bling on my desktop. I use KDE3, and have been good all year. I think I should be allowed to have bling on my desktop just like all of my GNOME friends.
To this end, I’ve tried running compiz with emerald in my KDE desktop. I can get both compiz and emerald running just nicely and get it all configured the way that I like it. But then whenever I restart X and compiz comes back, it manages to forget half of my keybindings and configuration settings. I don’t think I’m doing anything weird or revolutionary in my settings–just an 8-sided cube with viewport-switching keybindings, ring switching, scale niftiness, animations and other standard-looking stuff.
But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why compiz just manages to forget half of its configuration between restarts. I’m using “ccsm” to configure stuff and for the most part it seems to work just fine (i.e. compiz seems to honor the settings as I’m configuring them). Any idea on what I’m doing wrong? Or is it because I’m using compiz + emerald + KDE? Does anyone in KDE3 desktop land have successful bling with compiz?
I think it is because some KDE settings are being loaded after compiz starts, thus messing with the compiz settings. What I do is change the backend to flat file and then back to kconfig, and that seems to re-apply the compiz settings. It is annoying to have to do that every time, but I haven’t found any better workarounds.
Personally, I’m hoping kwin in KDE4 is cool enough for me to not need compiz+emerald any more.
Yes! I’m running Frugalware current, and I followed the instructions in their Wiki (http://wiki.frugalware.org/Main_Page and follow the link to HowTos – sorry, the site is down at the moment). It all just works. Perfectly.
I note, however, that they have separate instructions for Nvidia and ATI. I have Nvidia, so that may be the stumbling block?
Good luck!
Sigh… Yes… Compiz et al never worked well for me. I want the productive features from Compiz incorporated into kwin 🙂
Solution; try out kde4 😉
i think the settings are loaded over dbus, use the kconfig backend and make sure the dbus plugin is loaded and running, everything works fine here 🙂
I have compiz-fusion (before beryl) working all fine on my kde 3.5.8 desktop with pclinuxos 2007.
Here is a Kubuntu Gutsy user, with Compiz and KDE 3.5.8 working together nicely.
Try checking what settings backend are you using, I prefer the flat config file over the kconfig backend.
@Bob:
Nice to see someone using frugalware. It is indeed a great distro. Anyway. I also followed the fw guide, and now it works perfectly.
Its working like a charm for me on OpenSUSE 10.3 x64 (KDE 3.5.7 release 72). All my keybindings remain intact even after reboot. I use an ATI X1800XT, XGL and the proprietary FGLRX drivers.
I know what the problem is. You said “I don’t think I’m doing anything weird or revolutionary in my settings–just an 8-sided cube”. Dude, a cube with 8-sides is pretty fscking weird! You’re lucky the only problem is Compiz forgetting settings. If I had an 8-sided cube I would be worrying about the imminent collapse of the fabric of spacetime.
I reccomend that you do not use the kconfig backend, but the default flat one. Also, it helps if you change your window manager to be compiz instead of kwin. That way there is no need for kwin to start, and then be replaced by compiz, which means speedier boot times (yay!)
Compiz/emerald has always worked for me on my ATI Xpress1100, and it works even better with the 8.42 AIGLX drivers.
What about trying Aquamarine?
That might be a help.
wait until kde4, only left a few weeks and is really good the work to make unnecessary beryl/compiz under kde4.
I’m running KDE 3.58 on Kubuntu Gutsy, works great with compiz…
but I’m not using emerald as window decorator….. kde-window-decorator instead…. just like kwin with composite support.
some forums says that Aquamarine is good, but I didn’t tested it yet.
Thanks, all, for your comments. I’ve just wasted another hour of my life and I still don’t have any compiz goodness that works across X sessions. =:( I should have asked… those who have compiz working across X sessions… Can you please tell me:
– what version of compiz do you have installed? (I’ve been using 0.5.4, apparently).
– which rpms/packages do you have installed?
– how exactly are you starting compiz (command line, etc.) and the decorator?
– how exactly are you configuring compiz? editing files by hand? ccsm?
And yeah, I’m hoping kde4 will have everything that compiz offers, but I did just tried it a couple of weeks ago and there’s still lots of functionality that compiz offers that kwin4 doesn’t yet.
Ah Hah! Okay, sweetness. I just added the X11:XGL smart repository and updated compiz and friends to the latest (0.6.2), and now we’re cookin’ with gas! The little compiz fusion tray icon thing is genius. I restarted X and everything came back perfectly as far as compiz is concerned. Settings remembered, etc. Pure grooviness! Brilliant!! Love it!! =:) This definitely restores my faith in Mr. Reveman’s software. =;)
Now, my darling bride is leaning over my shoulder, looking at her OS X powerbook asking “hey, how come my laptop can’t do that…” =:)
Thanks all. It looks like the solution is to upgrade to 0.6.2 (or whatever the latest is) of compiz. 0.5.4 definitely had some problems, it looks like.
Yaa Compiz fusion 0.54 was not a stable release neways. Infact for me 0.52 worked better than 0.54. 0.60 was the first stable release of compiz fusion. Anyways, good 2 know you have it up and running… As for OS X.. I find my leopard install miles ahead of compiz fusion in terms of elegance, stability and usability
Yes, I just scrapped my draft suggesting (inter alia) an upgrade to compiz and the tasty little fusion-icon program. I put a link to fusion-icon into my Autostart folder: not the most elegant solution, but it survives package upgrades!
Cheers,
Bob