XGL -maturity/package question

sula · 2006-08-12 21:21:11

Hi

I have been wondering when xgl/compriz will be mature enough to be added as a package at official repos?
It isnt there now because of problems with xgl or because devs has more important work to do?
Or maybe because xgl is not raady enough and it would cause to much problems with functionality and such...

I'm not bitching at devs(i really appreciate great work they do) or someting i'm just curious.

PS.My english writing skills are still really bad sorry i jope you know what i mean

baze · 2006-08-12 22:33:56

i think it will be added once there is a stable release.

karsten · 2006-08-12 23:22:53

yeah xgl is way not ready for production work yet. don't use it on a machine you actually need to have working 24/7 without crashes

sula · 2006-08-12 23:42:08

I did some "googling" and found this
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Xgl
from what i see there work at xgl is quite advanced
i hope they will release 1.0 ver fast

But what bugs me is ,do they will menage to make a possibility to run opengl apps under xgl like for example games ,as far as i know it is impossible to run games which use opengl when you have xgl running right now
and if/when it will be possible to have effect of xgl under someting other than compriz.
do you know something about this issues?

jaboua · 2006-08-13 00:13:57

sula wrote:

and if/when it will be possible to have effect of xgl under someting other than compriz.

As soon as the people who make the window managers makes support for XGL.

I read some while ago that E17 supports hardware acceleration, but I'm not sure if it is on XGL.

Gullible Jones · 2006-08-13 03:32:22

We will have AIGLX from Xorg 7.1 in the main repos once nVidia releases 7.1-compatible drivers.

T-u-N-i-X · 2006-08-13 21:37:07

What's the difference between the AIGLX and XGL ? A detailed comparison would really be appreciated.

By the way, I have tried the new XGL packages lately and found out that it's really not stable right now.. I wasn't able to quit GNOME when I click Logout (I wasn't using GDM since I need a modification in the conf files which I don't want right now) and instead I had to CTRL-ALT-BACK keys to close the X.. The effects were fine but I wasn't able to find which keys let's say opens the water effect.. It's different on every distro and it's not clear what keys are used in Arch..

Another problem is with dbus and keyboard layout... DBUS wasn't working when I first installed and ran XGL.. I had to add dbus-launch to startxgl script.

I didn't have good solution for keyboard layout.. TR and DE layouts are defined in xorg.conf and works great normally.. But in XGL, it writes USA in the layout changer and when I try to change it writes ?* and ?**.. I don't understand why it's happening..

But it works great and fast.. I could able to watch movies and listen my mp3s.. So there's a progress..

pauldonnelly · 2006-08-13 23:28:29

T-u-N-i-X wrote:

What's the difference between the AIGLX and XGL ? A detailed comparison would really be appreciated.

As I understand it, they try to accomplish basically the same thing: moving all of X's graphics to the computer's 3d hardware. AIGLX is an extension to plain old GLX, but Xgl is a whole new X server.

GLX is glue between OpenGL and the X window system. It allows an X server to either pass OpenGL stuff to hardware or render it in software (Mesa). This is indirect rendering. Unfortunately, this is pretty slow because it involves sending commands to the server using an extension to the X protocol. Usually you can use DRI to bypass the X server and speed up OpenGL considerably. This works right up until you want to run OpenGL programs within a compositing window manager, because if you use DRI, the WM can't capture the OpenGL commands, render to a texture, then display that texture, which is what it needs to do.

AIGLX (Accelerated Indirect GLX) is an attempt to accelerate indirect rendering and allow for easier compositing. It extends the X server to make fast indirect rendering possible. Since indirect rendering means that commands pass through the server, the server is able to redirect them and render to a texture rather than right to the screen. Each window gets a texture, and they can be arranged how the WM pleases.

Xgl is a whole new X server. It will eventually support fast indirect rendering, although it does not currently do so. It does allow all drawing commands to be sent to textures (a requirement for a compositing WM) and manipulated, just like AIGLX. Xglx is the current implementation. It runs on top of a traditional X server, so it can't provide fast indirect rendering. That's why 3d games have such terrible performance if you run them in Xglx. The WM can make use of DRI to draw itself (except on Intel cards ), but other apps can't use DRI, because that would stop the WM from capturing their OpenGL commands and managing them. Xegl is a future implementation of Xgl which does not rely on an existing X server, so it should be able to provide fast rendering to clients.

I'm not sure if AIGLX currently allows you to run a compositing window manager with fast 3d apps or not, but the idea is that you will be able to.

Basically, they differ in their approach. AIGLX aims to extend the X server, and Xgl aims to replace the X server. They're cooperating, so I don't think it makes much difference which wins out.

Gullible Jones · 2006-08-13 23:46:38

T-u-N-i-X wrote:

What's the difference between the AIGLX and XGL ? A detailed comparison would really be appreciated.

XGL is an X server architecture based on OpenGL. For most cards, it works by running the XGL server on top of the current X server in a GL window. That's XGLX, and it is an ugly way of doing things.

XeGL runs only with ATI's R200-type cards, and basically skips over the whole "server on top of a server" thing. It's what the XGL devs are aiming at, and looks rather distant.

AIGLX stands for "accelerated indirect GLX", and is a different approach - it's an extension that lets the ordinary X server to do accelerated OpenGL rendering. It is included in Xorg 7.1, and IIRC requires a patched version of Compiz. It supports some hardware that doesn't work with XGL (e.g. my VIA Unichrome crap), but does not support some hardware that XGL does (e.g. nVidia cards). If you want to try it, check in this thread for Xorg 7.1 PKGBUILDs.

Another problem is with dbus and keyboard layout... DBUS wasn't working when I first installed and ran XGL.. I had to add dbus-launch to startxgl script.

I've found it more convenient to start dbus when I log in... Try putting this in your .bashrc:

if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ; then
          eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`
fi

I'm not sure if --sh-syntax is actually necessary, I'll check on that shortly. I think it autodetects that by default...

Edit: --sh-syntax appears to be required. Also, the space before the semicolon is required, or --exit-with-session won't exit with the session. Such is the way of bash.

emuranch · 2006-08-24 16:48:55

It may not be in the official repos yet, but Danimoth's repo has Xgl and Compiz (and Quinstorm Compiz) packages pre-built. They seem to be working decently well for me.

karsten · 2006-08-25 00:04:39

emuranch wrote:

It may not be in the official repos yet, but Danimoth's repo has Xgl and Compiz (and Quinstorm Compiz) packages pre-built. They seem to be working decently well for me.

is that compiz for xgl or aiglx?

emuranch · 2006-08-25 00:51:27

Xgl

Gullible Jones · 2006-08-25 01:15:52

From what I've been hearing, Compiz-AIGLX is very much broken at the moment.

nightfrost · 2006-08-25 11:30:37

Gullible Jones wrote:

From what I've been hearing, Compiz-AIGLX is very much broken at the moment.

Actually, I'm running it now again pretty finely on aiglx and with the i810 driver (855GM)

The compiz version is from the cvs just before quinn split things into compiz-core + compiz-plugins. I have had problems compiling compiz-plugins since... But things work now anyway.

I'd post pkgbuilds as soon as compiz-plugins works...

otherwise (if anyone would be interested), I do have binaries I can share. But they're compiled with --march=pentium-m.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-12 21:21:11

XGL -maturity/package question

#2 2006-08-12 22:33:56

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#3 2006-08-12 23:22:53

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#4 2006-08-12 23:42:08

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#5 2006-08-13 00:13:57

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#6 2006-08-13 03:32:22

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#7 2006-08-13 21:37:07

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#8 2006-08-13 23:28:29

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#9 2006-08-13 23:46:38

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#10 2006-08-24 16:48:55

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#11 2006-08-25 00:04:39

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#12 2006-08-25 00:51:27

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#13 2006-08-25 01:15:52

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

#14 2006-08-25 11:30:37

Re: XGL -maturity/package question

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