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Kyle Lutze posted <4443215D.9070409@×××××××××××.com>, excerpted below, on |
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Sun, 16 Apr 2006 22:02:21 -0700: |
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> you're a genius! composite fixed it, but why would composite be an issue? |
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Without 3D acceleration, composite is /very/ CPU intensive. |
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I don't know about your window manager, but on KDE/kwin, as would be |
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expected for KDE, there are a number of customizable fancy features |
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available with composite. There's window opacity, window fading, |
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and window drop-shadows, each of which can be independently |
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enabled/disabled and the degree of effect tweaked. For opacity, one |
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can choose the types of windows it applies to, active, inactive, |
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docked, moving, keep-above as active or not, and set the opacity of each |
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type independently. Naturally, one can overrule the general rule for |
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individual windows or window classes (all the windows belonging to an app |
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or just one specific one), if desired. Thus, one can control the level of |
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effects enabled, turning everything off but one, if desired. |
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Here, I found most of the effects not worth the trouble. However, I did |
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find setting inactive windows to 35% opacity an interesting/pleasing |
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effect, not too taxing on its own of the CPU(s), so I run with just that |
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turned on most of the time. (FWIW, that was without 3D acceleration, as I |
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had a BIOS issue that wouldn't let me run 3D accelerated, but I /am/ |
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running dual Opterons, which makes a difference. I figured out the BIOS |
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setting I had wrong and recently enabled acceleration, so should probably |
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go back and see if how many more effects I can turn on without taxing the |
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CPUs too much. I'm running an ATI Radeon 9250, selected because xorg |
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supports acceleration on it with the Free drivers -- I refuse to run |
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slaveryware NVidia /or/ ATI drivers -- and dual 1600x1200 monitors.) |
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So... if your window manager likewise has configurable composite features, |
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consider turning most of them off, only leaving one or two on, and see if |
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you can run composite then. It'll still drag the CPU a bit, but not as |
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badly, and you might find the tradeoff worth it -- or maybe not, but it's |
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something you can try, anyway. |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in |
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http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html |
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-- |
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