X.org 6.8.1, transparency and hardware acceleration. Rawk!

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phaedrus
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Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:27 pm
Location: Seattle, WA
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X.org 6.8.1, transparency and hardware acceleration. Rawk!

Post by phaedrus »

Hey all, I upgraded to Slack 10.1 last weekend and I've been playing around.

I posted some pics of my current desktop. They're in my gallery:

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

Anyway, I run WindowMaker, and I use mrxvt as my xterm (it's rxvt with tabs, and a few other goodies, like transparency). After upgrading (you need a recent version of the X.org server, at least 6.8.0, IIRC. I'm using 6.8.1), it was as simple as adding

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Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
to my X config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf for slackware) and making sure tha xcompmgr gets started when X starts up. To do this, add it to your .xinitrc before the line which exec's the windowmanager. The line should look something like this:

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/usr/X11R6/bin/xcompmgr &
For my machine, I also added

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    Option      "RenderAccel" "true"
    Option      "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
to the "Device" section. I added these specifically to the section for the closed source nvidia driver (I've got it setup so I can switch drivers when I restart X). It is slow as molasses if I don't use hardware acceleration (which means using the closed driver, AFAIK). Note: the two lines above work with nVidia cards and drivers, I don't know what you'd want to do for other cards (I think the RenderAccel option is usable, the AllowGLXWithComposite bit is to tell the driver to allow 3D and transparent windows, not the default).

The other utility to play with is transset. You type something like

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transset 0.5 
into your xterm, and the next window you click on will be at 50% transparency. That's how I got RealPlayer transparent.

Just wanted to show off a bit, and maybe help get someone else running with better eye candy. Linux can be very pretty, and IMO, match OSX in that regard (maybe not the enforced interface consistency, but I don't think that's a problem--enough other people do that there are solutions, as long as you stick to a pure Gnome or KDE setup, &c).

Enjoy.

Jeff
"If it ain't broke, mod it till it is"
They said... and now my BP6 needs new processors... D'oh
Slackware Linux v10.1
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purrkur
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Post by purrkur »

Good work there Jeff! I am also a sucker for eye-candy but with work and family taking up my time, things like tinkering with X.org take a back seat. I am always a sucker for seeing what others are doing and exchanging information and howto's as well. So thanks! I'll check out the settings mentioned.

I run KDE on my main machine which is a slightly overclocked XP2400+ (I overclocked the FSB to 166MHz), 1 GB memory and a GeForce4 4200 w/128 MB so KDE doesn't feel that bad :) On machines with lower hardware I usually use Fluxbox and at times I use Windowmaker as well.

Oh, thanks for the knac.com link! I am listening to it right now. If you got more decent radio stations then please post them!
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
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phaedrus
Posts: 75
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:27 pm
Location: Seattle, WA
Contact:

Post by phaedrus »

purrkur wrote:Good work there Jeff! I am also a sucker for eye-candy but with work and family taking up my time, things like tinkering with X.org take a back seat. I am always a sucker for seeing what others are doing and exchanging information and howto's as well. So thanks! I'll check out the settings mentioned.
I went poking around on Debian.org to try and figure out what XServer they're putting in Sarge. It looked like they were still using the XFree 4.3.x line (at least, that's what the unstable branch is currently using). Is this going to be the server that Sarge uses?

Do you know if they're going to switch over to the X.org server? The dust seems to have settled with that particular code fork. I would think that Debian would not move to XFree 4.4.x after the flap over the license terms.
purrkur wrote:I run KDE on my main machine which is a slightly overclocked XP2400+ (I overclocked the FSB to 166MHz), 1 GB memory and a GeForce4 4200 w/128 MB so KDE doesn't feel that bad :) On machines with lower hardware I usually use Fluxbox and at times I use Windowmaker as well.
The magic is in the GeForce4. I run a similar card, and the hardware acceleration is all that's needed to get the transparencies working well. I'm running a PII 400 box at the moment, and it doesn't mind doing transparency (it does mind running KDE, though).

I would assume that most cards can do the transparency, it's a pretty old feature, if I remember correctly.
purrkur wrote:Oh, thanks for the knac.com link! I am listening to it right now. If you got more decent radio stations then please post them!
Let's see, I already posted a link to the Detroit Industrial Underground.

So, besides KNAC, I listen to KEXP. It's a public station up here in Seattle, so I get to listen to it on FM as well as streaming. It's an indy rock/independent music station, pretty different from the other two. They play mostly indy rock but they will throw just about anything else into the mix. I like them because the morning DJ (John Richards) has great taste in music, and they never play commercials (which I can't say for any other station broadcasting in Seattle). They do specialty shows in the evenings. I've got a few favorites from that list.

Leon Berman's "Shake the Shack" on Friday night (6pm pacific time) is awesome (it's rockabilly, boogie rhythm and blues, and other good stuff).

Audioasis is on on Saturday nights at 6pm (pacific again), it's the local music show (bands from around Seattle, usually the range is Western Washington).

After Audioasis is Sonic Reducer, the punk show. Always high octane.

I'll turn C89.5 on on Sunday evenings. They've got an industrial show that runs from 6-midnight pacific time. I wouldn't listen to them at any other time (it's usually bad pop music).

That's most of what I listen to. C89.5 and KEXP both have antennas in my area, so I often listen to them the old-fashioned way.

Jeff
"If it ain't broke, mod it till it is"
They said... and now my BP6 needs new processors... D'oh
Slackware Linux v10.1
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purrkur
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Post by purrkur »

phaedrus wrote:I went poking around on Debian.org to try and figure out what XServer they're putting in Sarge. It looked like they were still using the XFree 4.3.x line (at least, that's what the unstable branch is currently using). Is this going to be the server that Sarge uses?

Do you know if they're going to switch over to the X.org server? The dust seems to have settled with that particular code fork. I would think that Debian would not move to XFree 4.4.x after the flap over the license terms.
Yes, Xfree 4.3.x.x is going to be in Sarge. I think the reason for that is that they didn't feel comfortable with switching because of time I guess. They are very conservative in that manner. I believe that once Sarge is released they will add that stuff to unstable along with Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4 that everybody is waiting for. These things have been put on hold even in unstable because all work is being geared towards Sarge. Debian won't be moving towards XFree 4.4.x. They were in fact one of the first to jump ship after the XFree gang changed their terms.

I think that Debian will also want to provide a stable upgrade path from XFRee86 to X.org. Remember that Debian users install once, upgrade forever! Debian users don't get new "major releases" on a CD that they get and "upgrade" their machine. upgrading a Debian box from one major release to another can be done with a network connection and two commands. With that in mind, they won't do X.org like most other distros did, which was "remove the old, install the new and things will *probably* work". This is what Gentoo did for example. It worked fine for me but the forums is full of unhappy users that had issues. Debian doesn't really work in this way.

phaedrus wrote:The magic is in the GeForce4. I run a similar card, and the hardware acceleration is all that's needed to get the transparencies working well. I'm running a PII 400 box at the moment, and it doesn't mind doing transparency (it does mind running KDE, though).
Man, we have to get you a better box! That sounds really painful! Having said that, I only recently installed Linux on a 150MHz laptop with 48 megs of memory and ran Fluxbox GUI with very acceptable performance! It all depends on what you intend to use it for!
phaedrus wrote:I would assume that most cards can do the transparency, it's a pretty old feature, if I remember correctly.
True. I got semi-transparency working in KDE. it is "semi" because some apps are only transparent against the desktop while other apps are transparent the way you see them. I didn't have to do any tuning of X.org to get that running though. It is just a KDE feature.

Thanks for the radio station tips! I listen to everything from regular rock music to punk music with the latter being what I listen to if I play something myself (not listening to the Radio). There is usually not a lot to choose from when considering that taste and the radio stations today that mostly play Britney and crap like that. I got one station here in Stockholm that I can listen to and another in Iceland that I track through the net. Now I can add your recommendations to my list!

[TIP]
I always try to find a URL to the radio station feed itself and then I use mplayer to play it. If I like the station and I listen to it often I will add an alias so I can just start listening to the radio station with a command, like so:

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alias xid='mplayer mms://apollo.vortex.is/XFM'
When I want to listen to that radio station in Iceland I simply run "xid" from the console where I hang out most of the time. I don't have to point and click in a brower, start a program or do anything at all like that. Four keyboard clicks and I got radio playing! Simple and easy!
[/TIP]
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
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