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Eye Candy

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Contents

Introduction

This page will guide you through how to set up various applications to get eye-candy on your Frugalware system. Note that this documentation is for frugalware-current, therefore 0.5 users will need to refer to Xgl's README.Frugalware in /usr/share/doc.

The components

Xgl

Xgl is a hardware accelerated X server. It renders everything that gets drawn to the screen with OpenGL to allow for fancy effects like wobbly windows, translucency, etc. The disadvantage to Xgl is that programs that already use OpenGL will not work on it. Xgl is only recommended if you do not have a graphics card that supports GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap.

NVIDIA

You'll undoubtedly get the best eye-candy experience with an nVidia graphics card. The latest nVidia drivers support GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap meaning you can the eye-candy apps natively without Xgl.

Beryl

Beryl is a window manager that was forked from Compiz (see below). It contains many more features, supports a wider range of hardware and is much easier to set up.

Compiz

Compiz is a window manager that has been specifically designed to be used for eye-candy. Unfortunately, if you are a KDE user, this will not work for you (yet). Compiz provides some great effects demonstrated in the images/videos below.

See it in action

Screenshots

Videos

We currently have 2 videos of Compiz in action. We may add more in the future. Note that these videos may jump or skip bits, as they were filmed on Alex's trusty 700Mhz Pentium 3 :)

Setting it up - The Xgl Way

If you are using an nVIDIA card, do not use this method. It will only slow you down!

This method will only work for nVidia/ATI/i810 users right now. If you are using an nVidia or ATI card, make sure the binary drivers for your card are installed.

ATI:

pacman -S fglrx

nVidia:

pacman -S nvidia

Fire up your Gnome Terminal, Xterm, Linux Console, or whatever. Do

su -

Enter your root password, then run:

pacman -Sy mesa-cvs xgl

Now simply run this to enable Xgl:

fw-xgl-control --enable

To disable Xgl in future, you should run:

fw-xgl-control --disable

Now read on to the Window Manager setup section!

Setting it up - The NVIDIA Way

If you have an nVidia card, you're in luck - you can use all the fancy effects without the need for Xgl. This means you'll get much better performance

First of all, you'll need the latest nVidia drivers (1.0-9629).

pacman -Sy nvidia

Now you need to edit your xorg.conf. Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf in your favourite editor (as root!). First find the Device section for your nVidia card. Add the following line to it:

Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "false"

Now go to the Screen section. Make sure the following lines are there:

Option     "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option     "RenderAccel" "true"
Option     "Coolbits" "1"
Option     "TripleBuffer" "true"
Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"

Finally, make sure the Composite extension is enabled. If it's not, add these lines to the bottom of the file:

Section "Extensions"
   Option     "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Save the file, and then reboot. Your system should now be set up to use Beryl or Compiz.

Window Manager Setup

Now you need to install a window manager to be able to get all these fancy effects. Both Beryl and Compiz provide this functionality. Let's install both for now and you can choose which one you want to use.

pacman -Sy beryl beryl-manager beryl-plugins beryl-dbus beryl-settings \
emerald emerald-themes compiz

Now you can simply fire up beryl-manager from your command line (Not as root). An icon should appear in your system tray. Right click it and go to Select Window Manager. Choose from either "Beryl" or "Compiz with COW" (do not choose the standard Compiz, it will freeze your computer). You can choose which you prefer. If at any time you wish to return to your normal window manager, just select it from the beryl-manager icon.

If it works, you should add beryl-manager to the startup programs in your desktop environment. In GNOME this can be done by going to System -> Preferences -> Sessions -> Startup Programs.

Troubleshooting

If it doesn't work for you, just pop onto the #frugalware channel on irc.freenode.net and poke AlexExtreme.

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