Hello all,
I finally got the ATI drivers installed on the Radeon x1600, **** I hate this card, it’s been a pain in my linux butt for 2 dang years.
Anyway, I would now like to enable desktop effects. I am running openSUSE 11 KDE4.1, is it best to go with kwin or compiz?
what’s the best way to enable the better(of the two) desktop effects window manager?
–Kp
ok, so I just enabled desktop effects, with the default (kwin), and now the Maximize/minimize/close buttons in the title bar are not visible. 
I just tried to turn off desktop effects by unchecking the “enable DE” box, but the effect won’t turn off.
any way to now turn off desktop effects? or to get the max, min, close buttons to show in the titlebar?
–kevin
Did you once have compiz running? I accidentally had a mix of compiz, kwin and emerald running that caused me to have the problem you describe.
While I tried to run kwin, I liked emerald enough that I gave in and ran compiz-fusion-icon to control things and went back to compiz. That was how I got my buttons back.
Because the systray widget is flaky for me, I often “lose” it and when I got it running, found I had 4 or 5 instances of compiz-fusion-icon running. No doubt, this hidden problem contributed to me losing the title bar boxes.
What I’m getting at is to make sure, if you have been experimenting with both compiz and kwin, be sure to have only one running.
Go to system/configuration/compiz
And start the compiz icon and mess with the settings.
For the window decorator I have emerald and for window manager I use compiz. Kwin gives me 16 desktops and I need to go in and configure it to 4.
But see what works best for you.
As mentioned in another post. I don’t really use desktop effects.
But I did start it up to see how it worked with FF 3.
You need to log out or reboot your puter after enabling desktop effects. To disable them.
It’s my understanding that you can only have 1 running at a time, either kwin or compiz. Am I incorrect? After a fresh install of openSUSE 11, and KDE4.1 upgrade I installed the ATI drivers, then just clicked the “Enable Desktop Effects” checkbox. So I am assuming I am using kwin at that point.
I will mess with it some more, though it could also be the card (Radeon x1600) that could be the culprit as this card has been a PITA to get setup in linux.
–k
Yes, only 1 at a time. And yes, Desktop Effects turns on kwin compositing. There was another place under Configure Desktop where you could toggle between kwin and compiz, but I can’t find it now, so probably it’s gone in 4.1. On this same machine I have compiz-fusion running on 3.5.9 and kwin on 4.1. So far I’m finding kwin in general faster, more stable, better integrated; the trade-off is that it doesn’t have the bells/whistles that compiz-fusion has (which is OK with me). There is a howto at KDE TechBase (“GPU-Performance”) on tweaking the compositing via the Desktop Effects/Advanced Options and xorg.conf
@kevinpo -
Re my post just above (and on your other thread), fyi I’ve just got into the prev ref’d KDE TechBase article. Note:
Several popular graphics cards - especially nvidia ones - exhibit performance problems with KDE4. These performance hits mostly concern Plasma and KWin. Generally speaking this isn’t due to KDE4 being unoptimized but a problem with the cards’ graphics drivers. The page encompasses certain problems that might arise and how to get rid of them.*
This is probably the source of at least some of the driver complaints I saw on the nvidia forums. I don’t know that it’s a serious enough issue to move one to go with an ATI card instead, but useful to know. At any rate, some tweaking - and maybe patience - may be required for a while. fwiw.
Thanx for the info. I am going to stick with my ATI card for a while, I’ve always been a ATI fan, ever since the Rage Fury Maxx back in the Quake 2 days. 
I will give the tweaking a shot, and yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a driver issue in both ATI and nVidia. Though I will give it a few months, and if by then there are still issues with my ATI card, out with the old and in with an older nVidia, probably the 8500, or 8600 series line. maybe even by then a decent price 9xxx card.
Thanx again for the info and help. It’s nice to see people in the forums helping one another out.
–kp
@kevinpo -
Grrr! 
I stumbled across this a few minutes ago here: KDE/KDE4 - openSUSE
There seems to be an issue with the fglrx driver and KDE4, which causes windows to be painted/repainted very slow on KDE4, while this does not occur on KDE3. It doesn’t matter if compositing effects are turned on or off in KDE4.
The info is not date posted, so this may have been resolved. Or not. fwiw.
Thanx.
If this is with Desktop Effects turned on, I can say for sure that it is not fixed, at least with my card and current ATI drivers from the ATI repos.
No biggie, I just wanted to turn on desktop effects on the KDE4.1 box to watch it in it’s glory and have fully eyecandy (Mac OS X wannabe).
I shall be patient and wait for the next version of openSUSE or KDE4.2.
–Kevin
can u post your xorg.conf, just so we can check it isn’t a problem with its config
sure:
# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2008-08-06T20:43:04-0400.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer <sax@suse.de>, 2005
# Contact: SaX-User list <https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/sax-users>
#
# Automatically generated by [ISaX] (8.1)
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
#
Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/local"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
FontPath "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
InputDevices "/dev/gpmdata"
InputDevices "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "on"
Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
Option "IgnoreABI" "on"
Option "ZapWarning" "on"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "kbd"
Identifier "Keyboard[0]"
Option "Protocol" "Standard"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "mouse"
Identifier "Mouse[1]"
Option "Buttons" "9"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Name" "ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse"
Option "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
Option "Vendor" "Sysp"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Option "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
DisplaySize 305 230
HorizSync 30-66
Identifier "Monitor[0]"
ModelName "1680X1050@60HZ"
Option "DPMS"
Option "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
VendorName "--> LCD"
VertRefresh 50-61
UseModes "Modes[0]"
EndSection
Section "Modes"
Identifier "Modes[0]"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1680x1050" "1600x1024" "1600x1000" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1440x900" "1280x960" "1366x768" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1680x1050" "1600x1024" "1600x1000" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1440x900" "1280x960" "1366x768" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1680x1050" "1600x1024" "1600x1000" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1440x900" "1280x960" "1366x768" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1680x1050" "1600x1024" "1600x1000" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1440x900" "1280x960" "1366x768" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1280x720" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
Device "Device[0]"
Identifier "Screen[0]"
Monitor "Monitor[0]"
EndSection
Section "Device"
BoardName "Radeon X1600 Series (RV530 71C2)"
Driver "fglrx"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "Capabilities" "0x00000000"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "FSAAScale" "0"
Option "FSAAEnable" "off"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
VendorName "ATI"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout[all]"
InputDevice "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
Option "Clone" "off"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
Screen "Screen[0]"
EndSection
Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "on"
EndSection
let me know if there is something out of wack.
–kevin
There is nothing wrong with xorg and aiglx is on to 
does this happen on other distros with the same xorg and driver versions?