KWin refuses to stay at anything other than XRender. Regardless after reboot it reverts. Hmm.
KInfocenter says: 1.3 Mesa 9.2.3
OK, that means that the driver really only supports OpenGL 1.3 for your card.
Now that you mentioned it, I tried to switch myself to OpenGL 1.2, and had the same problem. In my case KWin reverted to OpenGL 2.0 though, since that is supported by my hardware (slightly newer than yours, Radeon 9600).
For me this was caused by the “Blur” effect. After disabling that one I can switch to OpenGL 1.2 just fine, without any error message about disabled effects.
So try to disable “Blur” as well. Maybe it works then? 
I still got a reversion to XRender after setting OpenGL 1.2 and a resulting 16 errors with the desktop effects currently enabled. It seems that OpenGL 1.3 is not going to be an option for these effects so I may be resigned to not having many enabled for my system. Might there be a way to optimize for OpenGL 1.3?
All effects I have enabled work fine here with OpenGL 1.2, except for Blur of course. There’s not really a difference between OpenGL 1.2 and 1.3 AFAIK.
Could you please post the list of those errors? Press on “Details” to get that.
Or try to disable all effects on the “All Effects” first, and see if OpenGL 1.2 sticks then.
You can then try to enable them one by one to see which work.
You may also want to try to change the “Scaling method” on the Advanced tab to something else like “Crisp”. That’s known to cause problems as well.
What output do you get for:
glxinfo | grep -e version -e " render"
No output at all.
I have an image answering your question about the list of errors that I wanted to post but don’t know how. Can you advise?
Upload it to http://susepaste.org/ and post a link.
OK, here’s the photo:
Well, the first one in the list is “Cool Effect”.
I don’t really know which one that is, my system is in german and I can’t find any similar sounding effect here.
Try to disable this one.
And if that doesn’t help, try to disable all effects for a start, as I suggested already.
Regarding the “glxinfo” line before, it should show something. Maybe you made a typo there?
Try “glxinfo | grep render”. Does that show something?
But that doesn’t matter anyway IMHO, your Xorg.0.log as posted by you earlier tells that everything is ok with the driver AFAICT.
@Tyler_K:
Please see here:
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/495134-Installing-ATI-video-driver-package?p=2622389#post2622389
On casual glance, the output looks fine/as expected.
Do you have the “Mesa-demo-x” package installed? If no, then that explains that result … but if yes, well, then there’s something funny going on in dri land
The Mesa-demo-x package was NOT installed but I installed it to experiment. Made no difference even though I had all the desktop effects disabled. I’m going to reboot now to see what, if any, difference that will make. Thanks for the help.
Rebooting made no difference.
The following output was received:
charles@linux-x0up:~> glxinfo | grep render
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R100 (RV200 4C58) x86/MMX/SSE2 TCL DRI2
charles@linux-x0up:~>
Of course.
Installing “Mesa-demo-x” has no influence on your graphics driver or KDE. It’s just needed to get that requested info, because it contains the command “glxinfo”.
So you cannot even activate desktop effect when all effects are disabled? What error message do you get then?
Does it work with a new user?
Can you post your ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc?
Maybe try this and reboot afterwards:
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key OpenGLIsUnsafe false
and/or:
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key CheckIsSafe true
Or even:
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key DisableChecks true
(try one after the other with a reboot afterwards everytime and test if you can enable OpenGL then)
$Version]update_info=kwin_remove_effects.upd:kwin4.7_effects
[Compositing]
AnimationSpeed=3
Backend=XRender
CheckIsSafe=true
DisableChecks=true
Enabled=true
GLColorCorrection=false
GLCore=false
GLLegacy=true
GLPreferBufferSwap=a
GLTextureFilter=2
GraphicsSystem=raster
HiddenPreviews=5
OpenGLIsUnsafe=false
UnredirectFullscreen=false
XRenderSmoothScale=false
[Effect-BoxSwitch]
TabBox=false
TabBoxAlternative=false
[Effect-MagicLamp]
AnimationDuration=1000
[Effect-Zoom]
EnableFocusTracking=true
InitialZoom=1
[Plugins]
kwin4_effect_blurEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_cooleffectEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_coverswitchEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_cubeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_cubeslideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_dashboardEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_desktopgridEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_dialogparentEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_diminactiveEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_dimscreenEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_fadeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_fadedesktopEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_fallapartEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_flipswitchEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_glideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_highlightwindowEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_invertEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_kscreenEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_loginEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_logoutEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_lookingglassEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_magiclampEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_magnifierEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_maximizeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_minimizeanimationEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_mouseclickEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_mousemarkEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_presentwindowsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_resizeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_scaleinEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_screenedgeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_screenshotEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_sheetEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_showfpsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_showpaintEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_slideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_slidebackEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_slidingpopupsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_snaphelperEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_startupfeedbackEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_taskbarthumbnailEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_thumbnailasideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_trackmouseEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_translucencyEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_windowgeometryEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_wobblywindowsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_zoomEnabled=false
[TabBox]
DesktopMode=1
ShowTabBox=true
Also, all 3 commands had NO effect on my ability to set anything to OpenGL 1.2 after each reboot.
I am going to try a new user and will post back in the next reply. Thanks.
New user exhibited the exact same behavior as before.
Hm, the only option I miss there when compare with mine is “GLDirect=true”, so maybe try to set this as well:
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key GLDirect true
And what happens when you enable OpenGL directly in kwinrc? Does it stick then?
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Backend OpenGL
Other than that I have absolutely no idea anymore.
You might want to file a bug report at http://bugs.kde.org/ though.
Not having filed any bug reports before, I am not really capable of doing same. So, I’ll leave that to the more advanced members here until I get a better hang of how things work, or should work, and will attempt later on when I feel I can make a sensible contribution. Until then, I’ll just put up with the situation and be ever on the lookout for those similarly afflicted and see if a resolution becomes evident later. Thanks for the efforts to date. I really appreciate your personal involvement.
Well, only you can do that, because you are having the problem.
It works fine here f.e.
You could also try to ask in the KDE forums though. The KWin developers hang around there and might be able to help you better.
I guess in that case the most appropriate subforum would be Workspace/KWin:
http://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=111
And I just found another thing to try there.
Run this and check if desktop effects are working then:
KWIN_COMPOSE=O2 kwin --graphicssystem raster --replace &
Or try O1 instead of O2, for OpenGL 1.2.