e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

train · 2007-12-28 21:33:15

Hi,

i was wondering if i can use Xgl and / or compiz with e17. I could start Xgl and enlightenment.
The howto for compiz does not explain it. You can only choose between gnome / kde and (maybe xfce4)

skottish · 2007-12-28 22:13:59

All of them are window managers so it's not going to work. E17 (cvs at least) has some compositing stuff working, and others (like the Bling module) are very broken.

smurnjiff · 2007-12-28 22:14:02

You will be able to use XGL but not compiz since E17 is a desktop shell and Compiz is a window manager.

XGL is simply another X Server so you can run any window manager/desktop environment/desktop shell upon it. It's up to that program to take advantage of the new features in XGL. E17 will take advantage of composite (very buggy though).

skottish · 2007-12-28 22:15:26

I may have LIED about XGL...... Sorry.

iggy · 2007-12-29 02:29:06

i successfully use e17 with compositing stuff enabled!

i'm running an aiglx x server with the fglrx driver. for shadows and shading i use xcompmgr.
you can enable software compositing in the engine settings.

try it! you will love it!
e17 is a potent desktop shell!

good luck

mfg iggy

train · 2007-12-29 12:40:56

No worries about your bad english. Can you give me some hints of where to look further?
I was able to start xcompmgr when running an e17 session. I disabled the dropshadow module because xcompmgr offers a own solution.

However, i only understood that i can manually set transparency for some windows by calling:
transset 0.6

and then select a window for setting it transparent. I this the deal?

I think it's an amazing wm -- e17. But i don't quite get the xgl, beryl, compiz-fusion thing. Because they can be used with kde, gnome, else...

Sorry for my inconvenience.

smurnjiff · 2007-12-29 14:22:14

Yep that's right, you can use transset to change the transparency settings of individual windows. Xcompmgr and transset work together. Normally, xcompmgr will apply the transparency settings to all windows. Compiz-Fusion is a window manager, it cannot be run with other window managers/desktop environments/desktop shells like E17. XGL is the X server that provides architecture to run all these composited effects so any window manager can run on top of it.

nbvcxz · 2007-12-29 16:24:05

You can also try the bling module for e17 (wchich is another composite manager - instead of xcompmgr) - please remember to disable dropshadow module (bling and dropshadow don't look nice togeother)
Second thing: is XGL better than using aiglx (supposed not)?

skottish · 2007-12-29 17:18:06

Let me fix my misinformation from above with new good information:

Bling now works with drop shadows. I rebuilt E17 last night and it works. It doesn't function correctly with the Xrender engine though. And yes, this does mean that you can log out and log back in and still have windows. I highly recommend backing up the ~/.e directory before trying it.

Last edited by skottish (2007-12-29 17:20:02)

ypnos · 2007-12-30 02:04:21

Hi,

I think some clarification is helpfull here

We have several distinct components on several levels that play together, and I woud like to write a short summary about them to answer some questions asked in this thread.

Level 0: The X server with several optional "Extensions", like Xorg or XGL, Xnest (on top of Xorg)
Level 1: The window manager AND the composite manager
Level 2: The desktop environment

On level 0 we have Xorg, which since some years or so provides the "Composite" extension. This enables the usage of a composite manager. There can only be one composite manager running at once.
The window manager is not bound to a certain extension, but always available within X. There can also be only one window manager running at once.

Window manager: A window manager manages all windows, like drawing borders around them, let the user move & resize them, implement virtual desktops, etc. Both KDE and Gnome come with window managers like kwin or Metacity. E17 also comes with a window manager. Compiz also acts as window manager, therefor it does not only change the "look" but also the "feel"!

Composite manager: The composite manager is able to get all the window's contents, composite them into a single image and send this image to the video output. Therefor, if compositing is enabled, windows aren't drawn directly onto the screen by the X server anymore. Compositing is possible on _any_ Xorg server even without AIGLX or any 3D acceleration. I will talk about Compiz' requirements later.
Composite managers which were talked about here: xcompmgr, compiz, bling.

Desktop environment: The DE is not really an entity as-is, but rather a collection of interacting X clients which regularly comes with a distinct window manager. Gnome, KDE and E17 are called DEs. While it is possible to replace the window managers of Gnome and KDE easily by Compiz, this is not supported for E17 (yet). Compiz could also only act as a composite manager in cooperation with any window manager, but it was not designed that way.

So the reason why you cannot use compiz with E17 is simply that E17 already has a window manager; to run it with compiz you would have to try to manually replace E17's window manager with compiz, which would also result in the loss of distinct E17 features.

Now on Xgl: Xgl is layer 0, ie it is a replacement of Xorg. In fact, Xgl runs on top of another X-Server and uses that one's GLX extension to get itself a working GL content. After that, Xgl implements all the primitive drawing as GL commands. So it is possible to run E17 on top of Xgl, although the benefits are debatable (at least, Xgl could end up running faster because it uses the hardware's 3D acceleration to draw instead of its 2D acceleration -- while in an ideal world with perfect drivers, the 2D acceleration should be at least as fast, ...)

The question is: What is the purpose of Xgl and why it is needed? Well, basically a composite manager like Compiz (and not xcompmgr) uses OpenGL to composite the output image, enabling all the bling bling 3D effects on windows. To do so, it has to be able to generate textures out of the windows' contents (and that is, the texture maps directly to the window's pixmap lying in the graphic card's memory).
When XGL was invented, it wasn't possible to do this with a regular X server. AIGLX and the famous glx_texture_from_pixmap GL extension though provide a solution to this, whereas this GL extension was introduced into proprietary drivers a little bit late.
Today, there should be no need to use XGL for anyone! As XGL is a bad hack, you should try to avoid it, it introduces problems on various fields.

Have a good night,
Ypnos

skottish · 2007-12-30 03:02:50

ypnos wrote:

So the reason why you cannot use compiz with E17 is simply that E17 already has a window manager; to run it with compiz you would have to try to manually replace E17's window manager with compiz, which would also result in the loss of distinct E17 features.

E17 is a window manager... with extras.

ypnos wrote:

The question is: What is the purpose of Xgl and why it is needed? Well, basically a composite manager like Compiz (and not xcompmgr) uses OpenGL to composite the output image, enabling all the bling bling 3D effects on windows. To do so, it has to be able to generate textures out of the windows' contents (and that is, the texture maps directly to the window's pixmap lying in the graphic card's memory).

E17 composite manager is a derivative of xcompmgr, so you are correct that XGL isn't needed.

ypnos · 2007-12-30 12:02:32

Well, I wouldn't say E17 only consists of e, for example entrance is part of "E17" as well..
But it's clear that e is not as interchangeable as metacity, for example.

skottish · 2007-12-30 17:21:13

ypnos wrote:

Well, I wouldn't say E17 only consists of e, for example entrance is part of "E17" as well..
But it's clear that e is not as interchangeable as metacity, for example.

That's what I was saying above. E17 is a window manager with some desktop capabilities built in. To clarify a bit, you can use E17 as the window manager for Gnome in place of Metacity or KDE in place of KWin.

train · 2007-12-30 18:10:42

Thanks for the clarification. However, i can't get the bling module compiled. I used the make_e17 script from AUR, and it failed in compiling the modules. So i uncommented them and skipped them for now. My e17 looks quite fine, it's just the modules that are missing.

Any suggestions? (maybe start a new thread for this.)

thisllub · 2007-12-31 00:56:21

Long time Archers may shout at me for this but the Easy E17 script worked better under Arch than any other distro I have tried it with.
http://omicron.homeip.net/projects/easy_e17/easy_e17.sh

Zap · 2007-12-31 10:06:42

Uh my enlightenment is really slow with bling or xcompmgr :-\
catalyst 7.12 & ati radeon 9600
is my gpu too old ?
sorry for my english

/etc/X11/xorg.conf wrote:

Device
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "TexturedXrender" "true"
[...]
Extensions
Option "Composite" "True"
Option "XVideo" "Enable"
Option "DAMAGE" "True"
Option "RENDER" "True"
[...]

Last edited by Zap (2007-12-31 10:07:09)

ypnos · 2007-12-31 11:29:08

Are you sure with Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"?

You could also try to enable EXA. Perhaps that will increase your RENDER performance (I assume RENDER is used for Composite on your system).

Last edited by ypnos (2007-12-31 11:29:21)

Zap · 2008-01-12 12:57:52

ypnos wrote:

Are you sure with Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"?

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep Pixmaps
(**) fglrx(0): Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"

You could also try to enable EXA. Perhaps that will increase your RENDER performance (I assume RENDER is used for Composite on your system)

does EXA work with catalyst/fglrx driver ? :\

Matrix · 2008-01-12 22:03:23

Has anyone tried this ?

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-643655.html

schivmeister · 2008-01-12 22:17:53

E16 is a Window Manager. E17 is on development to becoming a DE, for now it is partially both. Argh. I want iBar in KDE! And possibly iPhone. Ughh no.

b9anders · 2008-01-13 18:00:33

thisllub wrote:

Long time Archers may shout at me for this but the Easy E17 script worked better under Arch than any other distro I have tried it with.
http://omicron.homeip.net/projects/easy_e17/easy_e17.sh

Can you give a list of dependencies needed for the script to work installing the whole thing?

skottish · 2008-01-13 18:53:04

b9anders wrote:

Can you give a list of dependencies needed for the script to work installing the whole thing?

You'll need all of base-devel:

pacman -S base-devel

And at least all of these:

dbus libxcomposite alsa-lib scrot libkbfile openssl libxcursor libxp libxinerama libxss libjpeg zlib pkgconfig xine-lib gstreamer0.10 pam xorg-xdm imlib2 libtool freetype2 libtiff libxrender libpng libungif

I don't have most extra modules installed, so there will be other dependencies. Also, I highly recommend that you use the PKGBUILDS and build script from takhis. That way you'll be able to sanely remove stuff if you don't want it:

ftp://takhis.net/arch/builds/

By the way for all E17 builders, mpdule did not build as of Friday.

For anyone that doesn't want all of the extra modules, this script works. Place it in the same directory as e_modules-cvs. Just add whatever modules you don't want. It's called "remove.sh" on my box:

#!/bin/sh

A=( alarm bling calendar cpu deskshow echo emu flame forecasts language mail mem mixer moon mpdule net news penguins photo rain screenshot slideshow snow taskbar uptime weather winselector wlan )



index=0
element_count=${#A[@]}
while [ "$index" -lt "$element_count" ]
do    # List all the elements in the array.

  echo "Removing ${A[$index]}"

  rm -rf ${A[$index]}
  let "index = $index + 1"
done

echo Done

Then add this after the line "msg "Starting make..." to the e_modules-cvs PKGBUILD:

cp ../../remove.sh ./

  ./remove.sh

Last edited by skottish (2008-01-13 19:16:44)

b9anders · 2008-01-13 22:31:04

cheers. got it succesfully compiled now. Does anyone know how I populate the menu?

skottish · 2008-01-13 22:38:37

b9anders wrote:

cheers. got it succesfully compiled now. Does anyone know how I populate the menu?

It should have happened automagically. What do the menus look like now?

b9anders · 2008-01-13 23:26:35

empty....

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-28 21:33:15

e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#2 2007-12-28 22:13:59

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#3 2007-12-28 22:14:02

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#4 2007-12-28 22:15:26

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#5 2007-12-29 02:29:06

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#6 2007-12-29 12:40:56

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#7 2007-12-29 14:22:14

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#8 2007-12-29 16:24:05

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#9 2007-12-29 17:18:06

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#10 2007-12-30 02:04:21

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#11 2007-12-30 03:02:50

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#12 2007-12-30 12:02:32

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#13 2007-12-30 17:21:13

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#14 2007-12-30 18:10:42

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#15 2007-12-31 00:56:21

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#16 2007-12-31 10:06:42

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#17 2007-12-31 11:29:08

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#18 2008-01-12 12:57:52

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#19 2008-01-12 22:03:23

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#20 2008-01-12 22:17:53

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#21 2008-01-13 18:00:33

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#22 2008-01-13 18:53:04

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#23 2008-01-13 22:31:04

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#24 2008-01-13 22:38:37

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

#25 2008-01-13 23:26:35

Re: e17 and Xgl, compiz etc.

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