Desktop effects KDE4.2

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#1

Hi!

I started to try KDE4.2 and everything is good, exept desktop effects
don’t work.
Once I tried 4.1, and then desktop effects worked fine.

I don’t think that this is an harware, driver or xorg.conf related
problem, since 3D works otherwise good. Glxgears run smoothly.
(well, compiz has never been too good on this machine, but kwin-effects
have worked)

Graphics card is ATI Radeon IGP 320M and I run KDE4.2 on Suse 11.0
card is using radeon driver (I don’t think it would run on any other)
and I have tried virtually anything I could find, related to my
problem.

I would be grateful of any help you can give.

–
ayni

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#2

If you installed fglrx properly and confogured it with sax2, then all
you need to do is go to configure desktop from main menu, desktop,
enable effects and choose which one you are going to use on “all
effects” tab.

There is nothing more to it.

If it does not work, try doing in konsole, as root,
sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx, reboot and start over

–
beli0135

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#3

beli0135;1935505 Wrote:
> If you installed fglrx properly and confogured it with sax2, then all
> you need to do is go to configure desktop from main menu, desktop,
> enable effects and choose which one you are going to use on “all
> effects” tab.
>
> There is nothing more to it.
>
> If it does not work, try doing in konsole, as root,
> sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx, reboot and start over

Well, I’m using free radeon driver, not ATI poprietary driver. I think
that this card doesn’t even work on fglrx.

Previosly I got this error message, when I tried to enable desktop
effects:
“Failed to activate desktop effects using the given configuration
options. Settings will be reverted to their previous values. Check your
X configuration. You may also consider changing advanced options,
especially changing the compositing type.”

I tried to enable effects, but minimum settings. It “worked” Desktop
effects are enabled, if you believe what you see on settings or kwinrc.
But none of the enabled effects are truely working.

–
ayni

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#4

ayni;1935511 Wrote:
> Well, I’m using free radeon driver, not ATI poprietary driver. I think
> that this card doesn’t even work on fglrx.
>
>
> Previosly I got this error message, when I tried to enable desktop
> effects:
> “Failed to activate desktop effects using the given configuration
> options. Settings will be reverted to their previous values. Check your
> X configuration. You may also consider changing advanced options,
> especially changing the compositing type.”
>
> I tried to enable effects, but minimum settings. It “worked” Desktop
> effects are enabled, if you believe what you see on settings or kwinrc.
> But none of the enabled effects are truely working.
Is this part included in your xorg.conf?

Code:

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

–
http://yami.googlecode.com/
http://akoskm.blogspot.com/

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#5

ram88;1935518 Wrote:
> Is this part included in your xorg.conf?
> >
Code:

> >
> Section “Extensions”
> Option “Composite” “Enable”
> EndSection
>

> >

Mine was:

Code:

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

But changing had no effect.

–
ayni

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#6

As I know, open driver is not capable of good 3D. But, I am not sure
about that.
There is no cost to try proprietary driver and give it a test run.

–
beli0135

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#7

beli0135;1935761 Wrote:
> As I know, open driver is not capable of good 3D. But, I am not sure
> about that.

i think you’re right. But I don’t want anything fancy. I just would
like to have some simple eye candy, that have worked before.
This KDE4.2 is otherwise quite good, and this is not critical, only
something that would be nice.

beli0135;1935761 Wrote:
>
> There is no cost to try proprietary driver and give it a test run.

Code:

sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

Stopped at:

Code:

Fatal server error:
no screens found

and

Code:

aticonfig --initial

stopped at segmentation fault.

So no luck.

–
ayni

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#8

I have exactly the same card on my trusty old laptop, and assure you
desktop effects do run. Not as smoothly as on a brand new C2D machine,
but still well enough. As far as I know, this card is only supported by
the open source radeon driver, so no use in trying out fglrx.

In fact, effects performance on KDE 4.2 is the best for me since the
beginning of KDE 4. Some of the effects are still lagging, but shadows,
wobbly windows, the magic lamp, the desktop cube, screen dimming to name
just a few that come to mind work well. Perhaps you should look for the
option that says disable functionality checks, and tick it. Otherwise,
it would not work.

Another thing that comes to mind is to enable AIGLX in your xorg.conf,
and disable XGL. I can give you more details as soon as I get home to my
laptop, which shoud be in a few hours.

Lastly, you may check in System Settings, Default Application, Window
Manager (may not recall it correctly), the last option is the default
window manager, make sure it says KWin.

In 11.0 I used compiz as it was much smoother than kwin then, but in
11.1 compiz was somewhat problematic, and never gave me that kind of
performance. So I removed it completely. However, I must say the wobbly
and magic lamp on compiz worked better that the corresponding effects in
kwin.

Perhaps someone could post more detailed info about manual
configuration to tweak their performance?

Don’t get desparate, it does work! :slight_smile:

–
hermesrules

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#9

My way, that never failed so far is this:

  1. download driver from ATI site
  2. unpack, give +x permissions and start with ./ and follow the
    instructions (accept default/recommended settings).
  3. reboot, place “init 3” in grub menu just to boot with no graphics,
    and log as root (text mode)
  4. sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
  5. reboot

–
beli0135

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#10

hermesrules;1936109 Wrote:
> I have exactly the same card on my trusty old laptop, and assure you
> desktop effects do run. Not as smoothly as on a brand new C2D machine,
> but still well enough. As far as I know, this card is only supported by
> the open source radeon driver, so no use in trying out fglrx.

I had that feeling too, buttried anyway. To be shure.

hermesrules;1936109 Wrote:
> Perhaps you should look for the option that says disable functionality
> checks, and tick it. Otherwise, it would not work.

Gui disn’t let me, so I did it manually to kwinrc. Resulting first all
white then all balck screen with only my mouse pointer.

hermesrules;1936109 Wrote:
> Another thing that comes to mind is to enable AIGLX in your xorg.conf,
> and disable XGL.

done. didn’t make difference.

hermesrules;1936109 Wrote:
>
> Lastly, you may check in System Settings, Default Application, Window
> Manager (may not recall it correctly), the last option is the default
> window manager, make sure it says KWin.
>

For my finnish system it’s first option :), but anyways it has always
been KWin.

hermesrules;1936109 Wrote:
>
> Don’t get desparate, it does work! :slight_smile:

I’ll get over it even if it doesn’t.
Compiz slowed things too much when I tired it (over a year ago). So I
don’t have any 3d effects on my 3.5 desktop, and I shurely can live
without them with 4.2.

–
ayni

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#11

beli0135;1936183 Wrote:
> My way, that never failed so far is this:
>
> 1. download driver from ATI site
> 2. unpack, give +x permissions and start with ./ and follow the
> instructions (accept default/recommended settings).
> 3. reboot, place “init 3” in grub menu just to boot with no graphics,
> and log as root (text mode)
> 4. sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
> 5. reboot

As discussed before, fglrx does not work with this card, it’s too old.
It works with radeon, and desktop effects should work too. They worked
for me when I tried 4.1 few months ago. 4.1 wasn’t ready enough, so I
continued with 3.5. 4.2 seems ready, but effects don’t work.

–
ayni

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#12

I’m starting to feel, that this isn’t worth it.

Cpu’s running on high temperature (73°C), without any apparent reason.
CPU load appr. 10%
This machine is propably falling apart.

–
ayni

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