The Composite Manager Guide: How to Get Vista-ish Effects in (K)(X)Ubuntu.

[poofyhairguy]

You could also buy an ATI 92XX for $25 and set up EXA for special effects like the first post shows...you may need dapper for this though, which is unstable.

True. But get the 256mb one if you do that.

[MistaED]

Hey I was wondering (not sure if someone else has asked this) but is it possible to upgrade breezy's xorg to 7.0 or just 6.9 at least? I'd like to show off someone's slow pc that it can be fast and pretty again (it has a nice Ati 9200 in it) but I don't want them to run the unstable dapper drake for it.

Thanks
-MistaED

[poofyhairguy]

They don't, eh? Do you know if Raster plans on working out how to get E to work with xcompmgr?

Not really. Rasterman wants eye candy everyone can use, and thats not composite for at least two years.

[poofyhairguy]

In the rendering of the effects, but i still feel that it doesn't use it or provides the smoothness like i get in OSX.

Is it due to fact that its still "Composite manager" is still a work in progress.

Its because in OSX the entire Xserver like thing is built from the ground up for this stuff. We are bolting it on.

OSX is three to five years ahead in this area.

[piedamaro]

I made a script: it fades unfocused windows and gives 100% opacity to the focused one. Pretty neat but somewhat resource hungry. Inspired by eutotrans.rb by Daniel Forchheimer.
It depends on bash and standard X tools only, and should work with other WMs too (tested with metacity).

#!/bin/sh
# This is a script that uses transset-df or any other transset-
# patch that can take an window id as argument to allow
# opacity to follow the focused window.
# The focused window get opacity 1.0 while all others
# have opacity set by the var 'FADING' in this script

# It is licensed under the GNU GPL license
# http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
# This program is written by: Luca De Rugeriis
# inspired by the work of Daniel Forchheimer (eutotrans.rb)
# Last update: 2005-12-29

FADING=0.85
TRANSSET="/usr/bin/transset-df"

#fade all windows
WINDOWS_LIST=`xwininfo -root  -children | grep -v panel | sed '1,6d' | grep -v 0x1000021 | cut -d " " -f 6`
for i in $WINDOWS_LIST;do
        $TRANSSET --id $i $FADING
done

LAST_FOCUSED=0

while (true); do
        FOCUSED=`xdpyinfo | grep focus | cut -c 16-24`
        if [ $LAST_FOCUSED != $FOCUSED ]; then
                $TRANSSET --id $FOCUSED 1
                $TRANSSET --id $LAST_FOCUSED -t $FADING
                LAST_FOCUSED=$FOCUSED
        fi
        sleep .1
done

To launch and kill it I use modified version of frodon's script:

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$(pidof xcompmgr)" ]
then
        killall xcompmgr
	for i in `ps ax|grep eutotrans|grep -v grep |cut -d " " -f 1`;do
		kill $i
	done
	sleep .5
	killall metacity

else
        xcompmgr -fF -I.02 -O.02 -D6 -cC  -t-4 -l-8 -r5&
	~/bin/eutotrans-clean.sh&
	sleep .5
	killall metacity
fi

Have fun!

[zenlunatic]

Will this work on PowerPC? Also how will it run on a 600mhz with 8 megs of video ram?

[poofyhairguy]

Will this work on PowerPC? Also how will it run on a 600mhz with 8 megs of video ram?

I honestly have no idea.

Try it and tell me.

You might have to compile your own xcompmgr though. Maybe not. Try installing it in synaptic.

[jeffreyvergara.NET]

how do you make gdesklet always on top when composite manager is on? the gdesklet will be always on top again if i turned of composite manager.

[Footer]

Cool stuff. Just discovered this the other day. Got it up and running and been playing with it for just a short time. I have a quick question though. My task bar and SuperKaramba apps on the desktop seem to be a bit more faded/washed out when I have translucency enabled. They're bright and fine when not enabled. Is there some way to make them bright yet still keep translucency enabled?

Thanks!

[fannymites]

Has anyone here tried running kwin in dapper (gnome)? Last time I tried kwin in gnome was in debian a while back and it was hopeless but in dapper it's running perfectly and not a single crash so far. The kwin composite manager is so much better.