Seasick...

I am all for eye candy, but the new overshooting compiz cube is maybe a bit too realistic, at least on 3 cups of coffee and an empty stomach.
I looked for a damping factor in CCSM, had to get a new python-gtk on the way (PyGtk 2.12.0 or later required) and at least got something I could live with by turning the acceleration down and the speed up. Not exactly intuitive.

Blank Java windows with compiz

Java apps (e.g. my favourite BibTeX editor, JabRef) have a habit of coming up as persistently blank windows with compiz and several recent Java versions. According to this thread this is due to Java expecting your window manager to re-parent the window which compiz doesn't (I'm so not a WM expert...). The following workaround did OK for me. Override the Java VM's default AWT Toolkit, e. g. calling JabRef:
export AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit
java -jar JabRef-2.3.1.jar
If you use Java apps a lot, it might be a good idea to add the export statement to your ~/.bashrc - or write the two lines above in a shell script in /usr/bin or similar.

UPDATE (2010): My days of compiz are long past, but I didn't change my ~/.bashrc despite several new SuSE installations. Running Jabref 2.5 with Sun's Java 1.6.0_17 on SuSE 11.2 (KDE 4.4β) produced a segfault citing a problematic frame in libc.so.6. Unsetting the AWT_TOOLKIT variable solved it.

Samsung P35: openSuSE 11 and Compiz

After I had completely f**ked up my X-Server by trying different fglrx drivers in order to get a reasonable compiz 3d-Acceleration, I finally decided to throw away my openSuSE 10.3 and install openSuSE 11 on my Samsung P35 XVM 1600 II, graphics card ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 series. Installation went smooth, apart from the interesting suggestion of the setup program not to just mount my home partition, but format it (yes, you should be careful about that as well - I don't want to lose all my settings just because openSuSE thinks that might be a good idea).

After the reboot, I was more than impressed... Compiz was running out of the box, without even the need to use the ati fglrx driver. This is the proof, with the radeon driver included in the XServer version of openSuSE 11 the card definitely runs AIGLX - by the way also without the well known "freeze after ending an x-session" error. Video playback of embedded flash movies in firefox unfortunately flickers a little bit. But if you use fusion-icon, you can switch back to Kwin as window manager temporarily for viewing (add the openSuSE Build: Xgl/Xorg repo to Yast in order to find fusion-icon). On the other hand, playing movies with Kaffeine doesn't show flicker at all.

The hotkeys don't work out of the box, but it is sufficient to look for acerhk in Yast after adding the standard repos and choose the appropriate rpm for your kernel flavor (which you can also get by opening Konqueror and typing sysinfo:/ into the adress bar). After the necessary reboot all the (important) hotkeys work.

ATI, OpenSuSE 11 and Compiz

Apparently the drivers in the openSuSE ATI repo are recent enough to support a reasonable AIGLX/Compiz performance, so no fiddling with the xorg.conf any more, just install the drivers and run sax2.
Compiz can replace KDM at startup: Control Centre -> KDE Components -> Session Manager. Here, you have a choice of window managers. "Compiz" will only work if compiz runs on your systems without extra options (e.g. --no-libg-fallback), which usually isn't the case. I prefer the "Compiz custom" option. To make that work, create a file "compiz-kde-launcher" in /usr/bin/, ~/bin or wherever your system can find it:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 3
wait
compiz --replace --no-libgl-fallback --ignore-desktop-hints ccp & #or whatever options work for you
sleep 1
emerald --replace &
exit 0

The sleep and wait statements are there to ensure that tray apps etc. have enough time to start up and emerald doesn't fire up before compiz is ready. Feel free to remove/change them.
Make the script executable:
# chmod a+x /usr/bin/compiz-kde-launcher
That's it.

Compiz and desktop shortcuts

One slightly annoying thing about Compiz is that it grabs control of some global shortcuts - I heavily depend on Katapult (default Alt+Space), the run dialog (Alt+F2) and the occasional XKill (Strg+Alt+Esc).
Fix:
1) Go to CCSM->General Options->Commands tab
2) Under "Commands", you can define up to 12 entries.

Katapult:	katapult
Run dialog:	dcop kdesktop KDesktopIface popupExecuteCommand
XKill:	xkill

3) Associate any keyboard shortcuts you want under "Key bindings". If there is a conflict, compiz will notify you. Compiz had already set Run dialog for Alt+F2 before, but for some reason the shortcut didn't work this time. Also shortcuts containing Esc will not work, you have to choose a different one for XKill.

Global shortcut conflicts (Amarok example, most KDE programs work analogously):
Amarok shortcuts seem to be generally window-manager-independent, however, conflicts are resolved in favour of compiz. This usually affects Win (Super) + C (Enhanced Zoom/Group and Tab Windows) and Win + Z (Put Windows).
The easiest way is to change your Amarok shortcuts: Amarok->Settings->Configure Global Shortcuts…
If you want to keep the Amarok shortcuts and to know exactly which compiz plugin is blocking your shortcut, do a grep (found here) in /etc/gconf/schemas:
grep -A 2 '<Super>c' /etc/gconf/schemas/*.schemas
(XML file, so use HTML string notation. Example for <Super>C, adapt if necessary). Either change the shortcut directly in the affected .schemas file (check whether the plugin is active), or use the CCSM GUI.

KDE 4
Global shortcuts are managed in the Personal Settings manager (Keyboard & Mouse) for all KDE4 applications.

Who's afraid of SuSE 11?

Me, apparently.
After spending the release date abroad, I still didn't want to abandon any of my nicely running 10.3 systems. Luckily (?) Persephone's (crappy old Intel lab computer) hard disk had just crashed and I took the opportunity to add a trial SuSE 11 to the ubiquitous Windows XP.

First impressions:
Setup:
Computer took 3 reboots each to recognise the SuSE DVD and the system disk. Did I mention it's crappy and old?
During setup, it is apparently possible to set up a standard user account as root (tick mark during password setup, active by default). Seems pretty dangerous to me.
Given the choice of KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.4, I settled for the 3.5 line (I'm waiting for 4.1 before trying anything serious). I presume that you can still add the KDE4-Desktop on top afterwards, as with SuSE 10.3.
Usage:
The default login screen in my humble opinion is ugly.
The system time is consistently off by more than an hour (I suspect the crappy hardware). Ctrl+Alt+Backspace has to be pressed two times to kill the X server, accompanied by a nasty beep (it's not a bug, it's a feature ... of Xorg 7.3 - thanks, daWuzzz). Hm. I can be pretty confused sometimes, but I have never in my life hit those keys by accident. Apparently one can remove the feature by setting "Zap Warning" to "off" in the xorg.conf (cf. comments here)
New Yast Software utility: miraculously, doesn't always refresh repositories before starting. If it does, it doesn't spawn pop-up windows every time a new repo is refreshed, so the focus-stealing issue is resolved. I love it!
Also comes in handy: The repository manager is directly accesible from the software manager.
The community repositories entry in Yast->Software has been merged into the Add-On Product item - as long as it's still around...
I didn't like the update checker in 10.3, the new one seems to speed up things a bit. Nice little extra: text bubble with update process details.

Eye Candy:
A not-too-fancy Compiz works OK even on a slightly older Intel on-board graphics chip (D845GVSR). AIGLX is enabled by default (no idea how this works with non-AIGLX capable chips or prorietary drivers, will test it with Xanthippe's ATI chip). Compiz can be started via Utilities->Desktop->Desktop Effects (some basic effects can be switched, for advances configuration use CCSM), no X restart necessary.

I will keep testing for some time - but I am seriously tempted to upgrade one of my other systems.

fglrx 8.476: Play movies at your own risk!

It is well known that the ATI fglrx driver produces flickering video in combination with compiz/AIGLX. One solution is to switch to kwin while playing DivX files, DVDs etc.; in this case fusion-icon is your friend ;-)
Nevertheless, with the latest driver (fglrx 8.476 aka AMD Catalyst 8.4) I was in for something special: trying to watch a movie with kaffeine on any window manager crashed my X session instantly. I ruefully reverted to fglrx 8.455.
Morale: Always keep a backup of the last remotely stable driver installer.

Compiz-fusion: Blur and Shadows

Taaris has already posted about this with respect to katapult in dark and foggy November.
Some remarks about how to get the full monty with compiz-fusion: no shadows behind "flat" windows like the kicker panel and katapult and blurry window borders.

Taaris' tip concerning ugly shadows behind katapult's fake transparency works also for kicker, e. g.
CCSM->Window Decoration->Shadow windows: any -(name="katapult" | name="kicker")

Window decoration blurring seems to work quite well by now with nVidia AIGLX, just check the following settings:

• CCSM->Blur Windows (activated)-> Alpha Blur (activated)


• Emerald Theme Manager->Emerald Settings->Compiz Decoration Blur Type: All decoration

Slow resizing in compiz

This has been posted all over the net, so it's more a personal memo stolen from All My Brain.
Window resizing on compiz/ATI is excruciatingly slow with the default settings. To fix that, configure the "Resize Window" plugin in the CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Resize modes Outline, Rectangle and Stretch work OK, Normal (default) keeps slowing you down.

Compiz and vanishing icons in kicker

Compiz tends to interfere with other startup processes, especially the kicker icons - in Xanthippe's case everything vanished except fusion-icon. If you start compiz with compiz-manager, there is a simple solution:
Insert a wait statement right at the beginning of the compiz-manager script (/usr/bin/compiz-manager), which should take care of any processes started right before compiz. In my case, an arbitrary number of icons still got eaten, so I added a sleep statement before that:

sleep 5
wait
ARCH=`arch`
if [ $ARCH == "x86_64" ]; then
      LIB=lib64
else
     LIB=lib
fi
...

Bash wait and sleep statements
The wait statement waits for the termination of a specific job (process ID or job spec given as argument). With no argument given, it waits for all processes to finish (that's what we did with compiz-manager). See the help wait shell command.
sleep n just delays the execution of your script by n seconds. More information in man sleep.

ATI, TV cards and compiz

Just to let you know. ATI closed source drivers and TV cards show an inherent problem: if you want to have eye-candy and you want to use Compiz, you will not be able to watch TV over a Pinnacle TV card (which is not because of Pinnacle, but because of the funny people at ATI writing drivers either allowing for video overlay or for compositing...). But who needs the useful eye-candy of Compiz anyway, regarding all the great television programs we have here... *cough*

By the way: this problem unfortunately is distri-independent...

Fusion icon and direct rendering

Compiz is working on both Xanthippe and Tisiphone for a change. The ATI 8.45 driver install on Xanthippe worked similarly to the 8.43 one, bless them, and is at least no worse than its predecessors (video still not working on top of compiz).
For compiz startup, one might use compiz-manager, which is an executable shell script in /usr/bin and can be installed via YaST. After some preliminary tests it starts compiz and fusion-icon, if the latter is present. Alternatively, just start fusion-icon with preselected compiz, this saves you one not entirely necessary compiz restart.
Apparently the newer nVidia drivers have problems with the libgl-indirect rendering, starting compiz in a shell without the "--no-libgl-fallback" option on Tisiphone results in a "No GLXFBConfig for default depth" error, and neither window borders nor keyboard input in X (here fusion-icon is invaluable to restart kwin). As fusion-icon doesn't seem to pass any options per default, it fails reloading compiz properly. So, one has to pass on all necessary compiz option to fusion icon and/or compiz-manager.

Modify (as root) /usr/bin/compiz-manager, add whatever options you deem necessary:

...
COMPIZ_OPTIONS="--no-libgl-fallback --ignore-desktop-hints --replace"
...

Do the same for /usr/lib(64)/python/site-packages/FusionIcon/data.py:

...
compiz_args = ['--replace', '--ignore-desktop-hints', '--no-libgl-fallback']
...

For all lazybones out there - link compiz-manager in the Autostart folder:
$ cd ~/.kde/Autostart
$ ln -s /usr/bin/compiz-manager or ln -s /usr/bin/fusion-icon

However, Xanthippe ist still behaving a bit weirdly: no Python tweaking whatever can induce her to start compiz properly with fusion-icon, whilst compiz-manager works perfectly. I wonder whether I really want to tackle that one...

ATI Catalyst 7.11 (AKA fglrx 8.433), AIGLX and compiz

This time I adhered to The Gospel According To CyberOrg:

I prepared my kernel sources as I did with fglrx 8.40, forced an aticonfig and edited my xorg.conf by hand instead of having it written by sax2. Benefits: much smaller file.


# cd /usr/src/linux
# make mrproper
# make cloneconfig
# make modules_prepare
# make clean
# rpm -e $(rpm -qa |grep fglrx)
# cd <directory where you put the driver>
# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-AMD64
# rpm -Uhv <some or other fglrx>.rpm
# aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --force

Don't run sax2 now!
Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section “Module”
     Load “dbe”
     Load “type1″
     Load “freetype”
     Load “extmod”
     Load “glx”
     Load “dri”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
     Option “AllowMouseOpenFail” “on”
     Option “IgnoreABI” “on”
     Option “AIGLX” “true”
EndSection

Section “Device”
     Identifier “aticonfig-Device[0]”
     Driver “fglrx”
     Option “FSAAEnable” “off”
     Option “Capabilities” “0×00000000″
     Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
     Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
     Option “FSAAScale” “0″
     Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps” “true”
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
     Option “DAMAGE” “true”
     Option “Composite” “true”
EndSection

Modify
/usr/bin/compiz-manager:

COMPIZ_OPTIONS="--no-libgl-fallback --ignore-desktop-hints --replace"
WHITELIST="nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx“

and change "Xgl" for "Xorg" in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

Works, at least if I don't run Compiz and video apps at the same time.

Beautifying Katapult

During my quest to polish Pandora's looks, I also figured out how to remove that ugly second shadow from the Katapult window when running compiz. It's as easy as running ccsm, going to the "Window Decoration" plugin and entering !name=katapult in "Shadow windows".

Blurring my window decoration

As of today, I can finally use my favorite Emerald window decoration again (unblurred it looked really awful) so I guess now that I have my eyecandy working again, I have no excuse not to post anymore....

So without further ado, I present you my very first post, HowTo get compiz working with xorg and native nVidia drivers (and make sure your window decorations are blurred).

First of all, make sure you have the proprietary nVidia drivers installed - in openSUSE 10.3, this can easily be achieved via 1-click install.

Then, install the following packages:

compiz
compizconfig-settings-manager
compiz-emerald
compiz-emerald-themes
compiz-fusion-kde
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
compiz-fusion-plugins-main
compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported
compiz-kde


Modify your xorg.conf:

Section "Module"

Make sure the following two lines are commented out if they exist:

# Load "dri"
# Load "GLcore"

Ad the following line:

Load "glx"


Section "Device"

Add the following lines below "Driver":

Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"


Section "Screen"

Make sure "DefaultDepth" is set to 24, if it isn't already, then add the following lines below "EndSubSection" or above the first "SubSection":

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "true"


Restart your X server.


Open the Compiz Settings Manager (ccsm), go to the "Window Decoration" plugin and in "Command" enter the following:

"emerald --replace" if you want Emerald as your window decorator or

"kde-window-decorator --replace" if you want the classical KDE window decorator.


Use the following command to start compiz:

compiz --replace ccp &


If your window decorations are not blurred (which seems to be a problem with some nVidia cards), try the following:

Start the Emerald Theme Manager (emerald-theme-manager -i) and go to the "Emerald Settings" tab, and make sure "Compiz Decoration Blur Type" is set to "All decoration".

If your decorations still aren't blurred, start compiz with the following options:

compiz --replace --no-libgl-fallback ccp & .


To return to use the default KDE window manager, run: kwin --replace &


To make compiz automatically load upon login, create a file called compiz.sh in ~/.kde/Autostart, and into it paste the following:

::cut here::
#!/bin/sh

sleep 12

compiz --replace --no-libgl-fallback ccp &

::cut here::

Make the file executable:

# chmod +x compiz.sh

Compiz Manager deinstallation fails

If you used the package compiz-manager-0.0.1_git071019-11.1.noarch and you wanted to update or deinstall it, you probably have experienced error messages like:

/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.56909: line 8: syntax error near unexpected token `fi'
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.56909: line 8: `fi'
error: %postun(compiz-manager-0.0.1_git071019-11.1.noarch) scriptlet failed, exit status 2

The trick is, to deinstall this stuff via a root console by executing rpm -e --noscripts compiz-manager - this will remove it from the database and you can install the updated version.

ATI driver 8.42.3, Radeon X1300 and compiz

Tonight I squandered a few hours of valuable sleeping time on the ATI 8.42 driver, which is rumoured to support AIGLX, and Xanthippe's Radeon X1300. Installing the thing worked OK, there was reasonable output from glxgears and fglrxinfo. Enabling AIGLX following this thread got me simply no 3d acceleration and the KWin window manager, while running the driver on XGL I experienced compiz with a nice desktop freeze.
I suppose I'll just wait for the next release...

N.B.: At least I'm not alone - and ATI seem to ship monthly driver releases right now.

Winter for GUI - when your X-Server freezes (your machine)

Right after using Xgl & Compiz with openSuSE 10.3 on Thukydides, a Samsung P35 XVM 1600 II with an ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, I experienced a wonderful winter: every time I ended a session and wanted to log in again, my computer froze - without the ability to switch even to a console. I tried different things in the settings, reinstalled the fglrx driver and so on, but it didn't help. Finally, after some research on google I found the following tip working for me (got it from here if you're interested in the source):
Look for the file kdmrc on your machine - on mine it is localized in /opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/. As Superuser look for the entry TerminateServer=false, change it to TerminateServer=true and reboot your machine. Trying it after an update failed, because the entry was positioned wrongly - obviously it must be at the end of the section [xcore-*. ...].

At least I don't have any problems with logging out and logging in any more - happy summertime.

Compiz-KDE problem: no window title bar

Just to let y'all know: if the kde-window-decorator ever crashes in your running compiz (which you probably will get to know by a "SIGHUP" warning of the kde management) don't panic. Also, if you ever get all windows without a title bar, which of course means that you cannot move or close windows that might be due to the crashed kde-window-decorator mentioned before. The stupid thing is, that this state is remembered, so even if you restart your X-Server you won't be able to recreate those damn useful window title bars. The trick is to run

kde-window-decorator &

from a console. This will instantly lead to windows having their title bars again, and also after a restart of the X-Server you can happily live ever after, or at least until the next crash of it (which actually happens on my system quite often... does anybody out there have a solution for that?) with move- and closeable windows.

Just a remark after some days: install fusion-icon and you'll get emerald as windows decorator, which is much more stable. It also lets you restart the windows manager just by a mouse-click if something weird happens with your windows.
You can run the emerald theme manager from it or you can run it using a console and executing

emerald-theme-manager

from your account (no superuser rights necessary)