Minimize very choppy when Cube is on

[rainy-day]

Hi, I have Ubuntu 7.10 and Nvidia 6200 card. I installed nvidia driver using 'envy' program because the driver that comes with 7.10 gives me black windows and Nvidia's own installation program installs the driver successfully but when system restarts, Xorg cannot load this driver and instead uses vesa generic driver, which is not good. I'm using compiz that's part of the 7.10. I really ran into a huge number of problems as I was trying to get it to work, every attempt to solve this would give me a completely different problem. This is a little frustrating.. Anyway, right now almost everything works except that minimize/maximize and animations in general work fairly smoothly, except that when I turn on the cube plugin, even if I don't use it at the time (in fact if I minimize the window 1 second after i check the box for cube plugin), minimize becomes much choppier, something like 3-4 times slower. Burn plugin is also particularly slow, it takes about 20 seconds on the standard setting where it should normally take about 2 seconds or less. I can't test right now whether this is also affected by cube.

Another problem is that compiz-tray-icon does not work at all. When it is run from terminal, it does not give any error, blocks that terminal and does not do anything. This is not the issue with taskbar size, even making it 32 pixel big does not give an icon.

I hunted around and installed the fusion-icon, but it completely screwed up my system. It makes all window operations extremely slow, and they redraw slowly, making half of the window black as they redraw, and generally just moving a window a few inches takes longer than a minute.

In fact, just having that program installed is enough to cause all of those problems. I had to apt-get remove to restore usable state of compiz.

Another thing is that I don't understand how compiz should be started. It starts automatically right now; I tried to improve animation performance using different settings, i.e. --loose-bindings, etc, by running compiz --replace with these options, but what happens is that I get the same problem with extremely slow performance, and it's no longer possible to restore normal performance other than either rebooting or starting metacity. Once metacity is started, even if I try to restart compiz with no options, I get the same terrible performance.

Also, there is no item for either compiz, or compiz settings program, or compiz icon in any ubuntu menu. I start them from terminals.

[Fyda]

1) Look in the settings for the Desktop Cube plugin, and make sure that in the Transparent Cube section, the Opacity When Not Rotating is set to 100. Having the cube constantly at any opacity less than 100 will certainly detract from overall performance (since it would be rendering all other sides of the cube).

2) In Ubuntu Gutsy, Compiz is not called "Compiz" in the settings. Instead, it is enabled via System -> Preferences -> Appearance. In the GNOME Appearance dialog, it's configured under the Visual Effects tab.

3) To my knowledge, there is no up-to-date "compiz-tray-icon" app. That appears to be something very old, left over from a much earlier time in Compiz's history. It is certainly not included with Compiz and I suspect it may not work correctly, if at all, with Gutsy and the current Compiz.

4) You installed fusion-icon from a .deb package? Where did you get such a package that was specifically for Ubuntu Gutsy? The only ones I know of are clearly for Debian Sid.

[rainy-day]

1) Look in the settings for the Desktop Cube plugin, and make sure that in the Transparent Cube section, the Opacity When Not Rotating is set to 100. Having the cube constantly at any opacity less than 100 will certainly detract from overall performance (since it would be rendering all other sides of the cube).

2) In Ubuntu Gutsy, Compiz is not called "Compiz" in the settings. Instead, it is enabled via System -> Preferences -> Appearance. In the GNOME Appearance dialog, it's configured under the Visual Effects tab.

3) To my knowledge, there is no up-to-date "compiz-tray-icon" app. That appears to be something very old, left over from a much earlier time in Compiz's history. It is certainly not included with Compiz and I suspect it may not work correctly, if at all, with Gutsy and the current Compiz.

4) You installed fusion-icon from a .deb package? Where did you get such a package that was specifically for Ubuntu Gutsy? The only ones I know of are clearly for Debian Sid.

1. You're absolutely right, I set it to about 95 and it wasn't noticeable with my images, I thought this would apply when the cube is visible at an angle but you aren't rotating it at the moment. Thanks! Setting it to 100 solved this.

2. I suspected this might be the case but wasn't sure. In fact enabling advanced appearance there (any advanced option) would bring my system to a crawl in the manner I described.

3. It is installed, however.. it's probably part of ubuntu 7.10 compiz.

4. Yep from a .deb. I basically found a thread that said that unfortunately compiz does not have the icon that we all loved to use in beryl and here's where you can get it. It did not say that it's only meant for some specific distro. Again, it does the same 'slow as molasses' thing as 'preferences/appearance' so I thought the problem is not with the icon program itself. Except that it also does the same thing when it's merely installed, not run.

Here's the page, in fact it's ubuntu forums so it's meant for ubuntu too:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3163821&postcount=8

I have some other things I forgot to ask.. Is there any doc that describes all of the compiz plugins and options? Is there any way to enable the old water effect that was set off when you ungrab a window? What is the standard approved way now to switch between metacity, compiz and anything else? Did aquamarine disappear now completely? What is the difference between using nvidia, glx and aiglx? I have glx enabled in the xorg.conf but when i run compiz --replace, it says glx is not found. If I play with aiglx and glx, is it possible to get much better performance? Also, sometimes toolbar buttons disappear, I need to resize the window slightly to make them re-appear, or shade/unshade. Thanks!!

[rainy-day]

One last thing I forgot, where is compiz set to run at startup, I remember there's a location .xinitrc where I used to put wmaker when I used that.. is there something new that does the same thing? thx!

[d_garbage]

Hi, you could look on the wiki for plugins descriptions. (Go to www.compiz-fusion.org (http://www.compiz-fusion.org/) wiki link on right side-bar.)

As for water effect you could see here (http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=5650&highlight=water+window+wave+effect).

As for Fusion-icon you could add your voice here (http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=6202&highlight=fusion-icon).

I think Nvidia cards work better with their own compositing and so best not to use glx - but I'm no expert.
Cheers,
David

[rainy-day]

Thanks! The wiki helped a lot.. btw is snow gone, too? I liked snow... It's a little odd that two best-looking effects are gone - water ungrab and snow, and the third best-looking, (arguably), burn - is incredibly slow here.. On the other hand, I had a white window bug in beryl and now in compiz-fusion it's gone, and some other effects look better.