TuxCentre

The recent problem faced by me was that suddenly after an online update my computer went too slow….i could feel the zagginess while while moving windows. After using “ctrl+esc” i realized that Xorg was using a lot of CPU % which didnt come below 25% n every thing was getting slow coz of it. I though it was due to some problem in compiz or Xorg n will vanish after one or two updates but that didn’t happen so it striked to me that it must be due to some plugin so i turned off all the plugins n every thing was normal again

I started to turn on each plugin one by one and observe the changes n i saw that blur plugin was on but its own n it was causing the problem and also the reflection plugin was causing the problem ( well i dont have a graphics card n if u do maybe reflection plugin wont make a difference i think) so u can try this n if even this doesnt solve the problem try switching off the KDE4 native effects. Hope this will solve the similar problem faced by any of u

Compiz 0.7.6 is out with a splash. The long tested Full sphere is out in the stable XGL repo and trust me it looks amazing.Though it took a little time for me to find out from where to turn it on. Well u can find it in the “effects” group under the “Cube reflection and deformation” plugin. There under the “Deformation” tab you can chose between the sphere and cylinder or a notmal cube. And if u select sphere and remove the tick from the “Deform caps” and “Cube Atlantis” is on then u will see a very very cute aquarium i have added a screen shot with it.

Another thing added is the “Static Switcher” plugin which shows thumbnails of all the open windows and moves caret instead of thumbnails.

One more thing added is the wallpaper plug in.This plugin helps u keep a different wallpaper for each phase of the cube. The only problem with this plug in is that right now Kdesktop doesnt support transperency so u wont be able to see the wallpaper set by compiz. At this point of time you have 3 options — first is that you can kill kdesktop but the problem is you wont be able to see the icons on your desktop. Second option is there is a patch available for transparency support but you will have to re-build kde-base.Third option is that u wait for the changes to come pre-built with the new kde-base

These were the differences i noticed n there might be more. If any of u find out, can paste it as a comment to this post

Though compiz is back n running on my openSUSE…but its like a new baby again. Its just like i started using it around a year back.Lots of bugs but the features are gud n up to date…But its good to finally use these mind boggling effects again on my laptop without a graphics card.

I just added the cyberorg repo in my openSUSE 10.3 n m going to update just now…n lets see what all is new in it…

Screen shots comming soon…

Finally Compiz is back in openSUSE 10.3….the latest update from the XGL openSUSE repo fixed the problem. But there is also another change that comes with new version of XGL… now the old command - “gnome-xgl-switch” no longer works…. now the command to start xgl is “xgl-switch –enable-xgl” and to stop it is “xgl-switch –disable-xgl”.

There are many new features added…i will test them and add new posts about them with screen shots

Compiz fusion and compiz have been updated to version 0.7.2  with the following updates —

Compiz:
- Translation support in gtk-window-decorator.
- Updated translations.
- Added wrapable session functions to core. This allows to provide a full
session save/restore in a plugin.

Compiz Fusion:
New Plugins:
compiz-fusion-plugins-main:
- session: Communicates with session manager to save/restore window state
- bs: Change window brightness and saturation with key/button bindings
- mousepoll: Provides a generic system for other plugins to get the current
mouse position
- mag: Provides a magnifying glass under the mouse pointer with 3 different
display modes (simple/image overlay/fisheye)

compiz-fusion-plugins-extra:
- 3d: Adds depth to your desktop by raising windows in layers off the cube
- loginout: Provides a simple system to implement login and logout animations
- maximumize: Resizes a window to fit within the available empty screen space
- notification: Displays error messages on the screen with libnotify
- shelf: Shrinks a window to a preset size for monitoring many windows at once
- showmouse: Paints particle emitters that orbit the mouse pointer to make it
more visible

compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported:
- atlantis: Renders an aquarium inside of the transparent cube

Configuration manager changes:
ccsm:
- Action settings were split into button, key, and edge settings, each using
its own widget.

simple-ccsm:
- New settings manager focused on simplicity and aimed at end users

When i first used compiz fusion with kde the way to enable was using the command “compiz ccp” (which is also there even now) but another way introduced was the compiz fusion icon which have many advantages as will be discussed further…

Previously compiz was enabled automatically but making an executable text document containg the command “compiz ccp &” in the bin folder of the user you use to log in. The compiz fusion icon which came in fedora from the start only, can be started  in the same manner by making an executable text file in the bin folder of the user you log-in into and adding the text “fusion icon &”.

Revison of the steps to do so :–>

1. Open the bin folder in the folder of the user u log into (eg: for root user open “/root/bin” for other users use “/home/user_name/bin”).

2.Create a text file in it.

3.Open the file and write in it “fusion-icon &”.

4.Save and Exit.

5.Right click on the file and in open properties for the file.

6.Under the permissions tab check is executable.

Restart and u will see the compiz fusion icon in system stray.

The greatest advantage of the fusion icon i think is that whenever compiz crashes (which happens many a times due to unstable versions) u can simply reload it by right clicking on the fusion icon and clicking on the reload window manager. Secondly you can Switch between various window decorators installed on your system (again by right clicking on the fusion icon). Thirdly you can change the window manager whenever you want (like when you are doing some serious work and the effects are irritating you). Fourthly you can also access the settings manager from it….

Please note the you need to have fusion icon installed on your system.In openSuse its available in the XGL repository.

Dont worry if you are using compiz and the title bar of all your windows suddenly disappear…this is just because the window decorator you are using has crashed….

Now there are two ways to get out of it…clean one is restart you machine….but if u r stuck with something and dont want to restart then just use the following command —>

1. “kde-window-decorator –replace” (if you are using the kde3 window decorator).

2.”emerald –replace” (if you are using emerald window decorator).

3.”kde4-window-decorator –replace” (if you are using kde4 window decorator).

And if compiz-fusion as a whole crashes the try the command “compiz ccp&”.

But u will need a restart eventually to make EVERY thing normal.

Contradictory to my previous blog compiz 0.7 is working fine…it was just the color opacity that was crashing  my compiz, and after testing all other plugins i found out that blur plugin  is also crashing compiz.Many new plugins have also been added like login/logout (though i was not able to find out what is does), magnifier, show mouse, appearance of cube atlantis has also been improved, error notification has been added etc. I was not able to use the new multi monitor support that they claim to have added, i any one knows how to use it please help me out with it.

Still looking forward for the new stable version of compiz fusion.

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the well-known Beryl composite window manager and Compiz Extras, a community set of improvements to the Compiz composite window manager.

Though Compiz Fusion aims to provide an easy and fun-to-use windowed environment but still using it on opensuse is a not every one’s piece of cake.Here i aim to simplyfy the steps for using compiz fusion on opensuse.

1.Firstly Download all the compiz-fusion packages from the openSUSE XGLRepository

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XGL/openSUSE_10.3/ (for open suse 10.3).

2. Next open the home directory of the user you use to log in (if u log in as root then go in /root directory) and make a text file in the bin directory and write the command “compiz cpp &” save and exit.

3.After the right click on the properties of that file and in the permissions tab check “is executable” to start compiz fusion every time you log in as that user.

4.Then enable xgl using the command ( gnome-xgl-switch –enable-gui) and restart the computer.

Note– In case of any problem start linux in failsafe mode and disable xgl ( gnome-xgl-switch –disable-gui )

5.compiz fusion is started to enable disable the plugins use “ccsm” command or the “compizconfig settings manager” form the Kmenu.

enjoy using an out of the box graphics experience with or WITHOUT a graphics card.

Below are some Pics of compiz-fusion on intel 915GM without a graphics card :–