X Compositing Is Slick
Posted by Eric Stewart Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:57:00 GMT
Not long ago I finally upgraded my Kubuntu Linux machine from Hoary Hedgehog to Breezy Badger. Since I was in a masochistic mood (although the upgrade went surprisingly well with only a few minor hiccups), I decided to try enabling compositing in XWindows.
Luckily someone else in the (K)ubuntu community had already done this and provided a handy guide. I had problems with the newest Breezy repository drivers for my NVidia card, but found the article’s advice to get the lastest NVidia drivers spot on.
I’m quite impressed. My Xwindows desktop feels much fresher and snappier. It’s amazing what a little eye candy can do for your mood. Now I don’t dread moving from my PowerBook to the Linux desktop to work on things quite as much. When your career envolves staring at a screen much of the day, what seems like frivilous decorations can really be a breath of fresh air to tired eyes sometimes.
The main issues I have seen so far are problems with openGL screen savers and occassionally a focus problem (non-focused windows are more transparent by default, and sometimes the compositing manager doesn’t seem to reduce transparency on the window that should be in focus). Not bad for Linux desktop technology, which usually lags the commercial vendors in features.
And it seems that more implementations for Xorg are coming down the pipe. Novell’s Xgl promises to move from raster to vector rendering, which should be very interesting.
And some year, when Vista manages to surface, my Windows desktop (well, when I have one again) will hopefully catch up with my Mac and Linux machines.
