[7956] in testers
Re: Compiz
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Tue Mar 17 18:56:01 2009
In-Reply-To: <49BBC6DF.7000203@mit.edu>
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Cc: testers@mit.edu, Geoffrey Thomas <geofft@mit.edu>
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From: William Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:54:57 -0400
To: Mike Khusid <mkhusid@mit.edu>
Thanks for the additional data about driver behavior with your
hardware, and the future of the fglrx driver.
My beef with compiz isn't that it fails to start. I keep finding
myriad subtle things that are either annoying, or troublesome to
particular classes of users.
We disabled compiz in Athena 10 for Early because of the following:
Repeat by:
Login with compiz as your window manager.
Have sensitive data in a gnome terminal window.
Have input focus on that gnome terminal window.
Enable screen saver to hide your sensitive data while you step
away from display.
Receive a zephyr window-gram.
Expected behavior:
No change to outward appearance of screen-saved display.
Actual behavior:
gnome terminal with sensitive data mapped on screen above the
screen
saver, disclosing your sensitive data.
----
compiz and zwgc simply don't get along.
compiz also seems to ignore the existance of the panels at the top
and bottom of the screen. Whereas metacity positions windows in the
area bounded by the panels, compiz uses the full screen dimensions,
so a lot of windows are position with their title bar hidden behind
the upper panel. Try getting hold of controls in the title bar when
it's obscured by the panel. :-(
My current cynical opinion is "compiz: Sacrifice usability for eye
candy."
-Bill
On Mar 14, 2009, at 11:01 AM, Mike Khusid wrote:
> Bill,
>
> Thanks for the detailed response. I also find himself struggling
> with ATI video drivers since my own laptop has one.
>
> In versions prior to Gutsy, I used fgrlx driver and Xgl. It's
> actually a very solid combination with extremely good 3D support.
> However, it occasionally requires user understanding of the
> configuration, esp dealing with two displays (:0 and :1), that
> would probably be too difficult.
>
> In Hardy, fglrx introduced AIGLX support, and I switched to this
> combination without Xgl. It would not be usable on general Athena
> since OpenGL applications have very hard time being displayed
> properly.
> Lastly, I just switched to open source drivers in jaunty. Fgrlx
> recently announced that my video card will not be supported in the
> future releases. Both radeon and radeon_hd work on my hardware
> (Mobility X1400 aka R500 family), and both provide adequate 3d
> hardware support. Radeon is notably faster than radeon_hd.
> All that said and done, I have agree that the development of the
> driver support is in flux and probably far from being a priority
> for the Debathena team. Nevertheless, if would be interesting to
> have a Wiki page dedicated to Athena users willing to enable 3D
> with proper support. The advanced desktop surely does catch people
> eyes and boosts user productivity. In a way, it's not dangerous to
> configure one's account for Compiz and 3D. If compiz fails to
> start, it automatically reverts to metacity.
>
> Mike
>
>
> William Cattey wrote:
>> I'm also going to chime in on this issue. Because of recent
>> findings with regard to 3d operation with the radeon driver used
>> on the Dell Optiplex 745 systems.
>>
>> On the Dell 755's we kludge cluster systems to use the radeon_hd
>> driver.
>> I'm not sure what we run on the HPs, but both it and the radeon_hd
>> do 3d with a software emulation of OpenGL.
>>
>> The Dell 745s are using the radeon driver (which is a subtly
>> different code base from the radeon_hd driver.) It has some 3d
>> support implemented, but it's done in such a way that several
>> third part apps (gaussian, maya, and ac3d) do not work.
>> Apparently the driver over-reached, and opted for fast sometimes-
>> correct operation instead of slow always-correct operation.
>>
>> Going forward, we expect the radeon driver to subsume the
>> radeon_hd driver and to be MUCH more functional when Jaunty comes
>> out, and gets integrated into Debathena.
>>
>> All this is a very detailed way of saying, 3d doesn't work
>> everywhere. And we know.
>>
>> -Bill Cattey
>>
>> On Mar 13, 2009, at 6:15 PM, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
>>> On Fri, 13 Mar 2009, Michael Khusid wrote:
>>>
>>>> Just noticed that the drivers for the public workstation video
>>>> cards support 3D acceleration. Took me less than 5 minutes to
>>>> get compiz running and the desktop cube spinning. Hello wobbly
>>>> windows :)
>>>>
>>>> I don't know if it should be the default behavior, but it surely
>>>> looks cooler than plain ole' Athena 9.
>>>
>>> We've made Compiz not the default on the beta, because there's a
>>> bug involving Compiz, zwgc, and the screensaver that causes your
>>> windows to be visible if you receive a zephyr.
>>>
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/336932
>>>
>>> Compiz works just fine if you disable zwgc (or are okay with the
>>> privacy issue), and don't have other applets like IM clients that
>>> can create windows when you're running the screen saver.
>>> Hopefully by the summer release we will have figured this out,
>>> and it will be the default again.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Geoffrey Thomas
>>> geofft@mit.edu
>>
