Several days ago I installed 12.1-64 KDE. A day later installed Gnome alongside (I like the new Gnome, been a Suse/KDE user for years).
The system is an Intel Core Quad with 2 GB of Ram, a pair of NVidia GEForce 8500 GT’s non SLI driving 2 View Sonic VX2250 monitors (1 per card DVI). Each 8500 GT has 512 MB of RAM. The NVidia drivers and the NVidia GFX-G02 desktop kernel drivers are loaded and being used. The monitors are set up in Twinview with monitor 1 “right of” monitor 0.
In messing about I decided since Compiz was available that I would try to enable the desktop effects (cube, transparencies&c) on this machine. I installed pretty much everything in the compiz library. Previously noticed under Personal Settings/desktop effects that “Desktop effects not available due to no XComposite and no XDamage” or words to that effect. After installation of the Compiz family (I did not install the development libs) using the Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager when enabling desktop effects, although the box and the different effects could all be checked, there were no results. Checked Xorg.conf and Composite was disabled. Vi’ed this and restarted X to all sorts of weirdness-- left monitor went blank, right monitor worked and everything “moved” to the right monitor. I could still move the mouse and see the pointer on the left hand monitor just nothing else (no wallpaper) was there. Did some more research and was led here
SDB:NVIDIA troubleshooting - openSUSE
vi’ed xorg.xconf again, added Option “UseCompositeWrapper” "true " for each of the 8500 GT’s in xorg.conf., re enabled compositing and got the same result. Rebooted into KDE and pretty much the same result as when in Gnome.
So this is where I am. I can find no source and not much mention for XComposite or XDamage either for installable packages or elsewhere with a Google search. I would like to enable desktop effects. I have not tried disabling twinview yet and then commenting back in the options in xorg.conf. In googling information about compiz I did find where there were warnings about video memory being a limitation on using compiz but from what I read 256 MB was the lower limit.
A number of years ago I installed compiz and/or beryl on my laptop and got the desktop effects–rotating cube, transparencies &c&c. I seem to remember that then one had to comment in Windows Manager of /etc/sysconfig either compiz or beryl. I have not tried changing /etc/sysconfig-- but I understand that the full window manager is compiz-fusion. Should this be commented in /etc/sysconfig?
Warmest regards to all. Thanks for the read. Advice appreciated
Expat1