Leap 42.1 "compositing not active" under Plasmashell 5.5.2 with NVidia 304.131 drivers (7950 GTX)

Hi guys.

Fresh 42.1 setup with NVidia Geforce Go 7950 GTX (Dell XPS M1710):

With default Plasma 5.4.2 I run into trouble with desktop compositing. Finally I can’t set compositing to active under OpenGL2 backend. XRender seems to work but is not an option. Too slow.

Some infos:
I installed the latest official NVidia 304.131 driver from the NVidia repo. Then I blacklisted the nouveau driver in /etc/modprobe.d and I put nomodeset string in the kernel cmdline. After restart I verified that the nouveau driver wasn’t loaded and that the NVidia driver worked properly.

In Plasma Systemsettings->Display and Monitor->Compositor-> OpenGL2.0 and GLX is selected.

Shell output from "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation"

Version
=======
KWin version: 5.5.2
Qt Version: 5.5.1
Qt compile version: 5.5.1
XCB compile version: 1.11.1

Operation Mode: X11 only

Build Options
=============
KWIN_BUILD_DECORATIONS: yes
KWIN_BUILD_TABBOX: yes
KWIN_BUILD_ACTIVITIES: yes
HAVE_INPUT: yes
HAVE_DRM: yes
HAVE_GBM: yes
HAVE_X11_XCB: yes
HAVE_EPOXY_GLX: yes
HAVE_WAYLAND_EGL: yes

X11
===
Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
Vendor Release: 11702000
Protocol Version/Revision: 11/0
SHAPE: yes; Version: 0x11
RANDR: yes; Version: 0x14
DAMAGE: yes; Version: 0x11
Composite: yes; Version: 0x4
RENDER: yes; Version: 0xb
XFIXES: yes; Version: 0x50
SYNC: yes; Version: 0x31
GLX: yes; Version: 0x0

Decoration
==========
Plugin: org.kde.breeze
Theme: 
Blur: 0
onAllDesktopsAvailable: true
alphaChannelSupported: false
closeOnDoubleClickOnMenu: false
decorationButtonsLeft: 0, 2
decorationButtonsRight: 6, 3, 4, 5
borderSize: 3
gridUnit: 14
font: Noto Sans,10,-1,0,50,0,0,0,0,0
smallSpacing: 3
largeSpacing: 14

Options
=======
focusPolicy: 0
nextFocusPrefersMouse: false
clickRaise: true
autoRaise: false
autoRaiseInterval: 0
delayFocusInterval: 0
shadeHover: false
shadeHoverInterval: 250
separateScreenFocus: false
placement: 4
focusPolicyIsReasonable: true
borderSnapZone: 10
windowSnapZone: 10
centerSnapZone: 0
snapOnlyWhenOverlapping: false
rollOverDesktops: true
focusStealingPreventionLevel: 1
legacyFullscreenSupport: false
operationTitlebarDblClick: 5000
operationMaxButtonLeftClick: 5000
operationMaxButtonMiddleClick: 5015
operationMaxButtonRightClick: 5014
commandActiveTitlebar1: 0
commandActiveTitlebar2: 30
commandActiveTitlebar3: 2
commandInactiveTitlebar1: 4
commandInactiveTitlebar2: 30
commandInactiveTitlebar3: 2
commandWindow1: 7
commandWindow2: 8
commandWindow3: 8
commandWindowWheel: 31
commandAll1: 10
commandAll2: 3
commandAll3: 14
keyCmdAllModKey: 16777251
showGeometryTip: false
condensedTitle: false
electricBorderMaximize: true
electricBorderTiling: true
electricBorderCornerRatio: 0.25
borderlessMaximizedWindows: false
killPingTimeout: 5000
hideUtilityWindowsForInactive: true
inactiveTabsSkipTaskbar: false
autogroupSimilarWindows: false
autogroupInForeground: true
compositingMode: 1
useCompositing: true
compositingInitialized: true
hiddenPreviews: 1
unredirectFullscreen: false
glSmoothScale: 2
colorCorrected: false
xrenderSmoothScale: false
maxFpsInterval: 16666666
refreshRate: 0
vBlankTime: 6000000
glStrictBinding: false
glStrictBindingFollowsDriver: true
glCoreProfile: false
glPreferBufferSwap: 99
glPlatformInterface: 1

Screen Edges
============
desktopSwitching: false
desktopSwitchingMovingClients: false
cursorPushBackDistance: 1x1
timeThreshold: 150
reActivateThreshold: 350
actionTopLeft: 0
actionTop: 0
actionTopRight: 0
actionRight: 0
actionBottomRight: 0
actionBottom: 0
actionBottomLeft: 0
actionLeft: 0

Screens
=======
Multi-Head: no
Active screen follows mouse:  no
Number of Screens: 1

Screen 0:
---------
Name: LVDS-0
Geometry: 0,0,1920x1200
Refresh Rate: 59.9687


**Compositing
===========
Compositing is not active**

This shows compositing is not active and I cant get it to run with OpenGL2. No idea how. No matter what I try.

Shell output from "glxinfo | grep OpenGL"

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce Go 7950 GTX/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 304.131
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 NVIDIA 304.131 304.131
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

Shell output from "glxinfo | grep glx"

server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions:
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:

**Shell output from “cat /var/log/XOrg.0.log”:
**https://paste.kde.org/p9yzviykq

So after testing around I decided to add http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/ repo and make a zypper dup (I know diff between up and dup) to update to Plasma 5.5.2 and Frameworks. Then I removed the NVidia repo and the G02 driver. After that I manually installed the NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.131.run driver from the cmdline. The compilation and installation worked without any errors and after a restart the driver runs without any problems.

Everything seems to work but still no desktop effects because compositing is still not active, even under Plasma 5.5.2. The last thing I did was to add the X11:XOrg repo for up to date mesa stuff and I switched to Kernel 4.1.15. But that also doesn’t take any effect on activating compositing under plasmashell. I dont know where to start troubleshooting. So what you mean, is this a Plasma or NVidia issue, or what? Any help or workaround possible?

Thx, Kai

NVIDIA driver uses it own mesa stuff. so installing a repo mesa will break NVIDIA or at least slow it.

I have an older box with Nvidia 6150LE, that uses the 302.xxx drivers. It doesn’t work well with Plasma 5. I’ve had to switch to XRender for compositing.

I also installed “Stellarium” on that box, and it complains about OpenGL2 support having problems. So I don’t think it is just a KDE issue. It might be that the Nvidia drivers have not adequately kept up with other changes in Xorg.

I also discovered that I cannot run Gnome on that box. It freezes just after startup. However, I currently have a test install of another distro, where Gnome 18.1 runs pretty well using nouveau drivers. Maybe it is time for me to consider giving up on nvidia drivers.

No ideas??

Could be a case of an older gpu not being supported.
I will look into my older laptop when I boot it, it is a 6 year old lappy dual core amd athlon x_64 witn nvidia card
using NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.131.run and still capable of handling the plasma 5 compositing with openGL enabled.