What next?
I've replaced my NVIDIA graphics card with an ATI FireGL V8600 on my Fedora 9 system (Intel Dual Core) and have been playing around for about a week now. There are some clear improvements to my system: rotating the desktop cube, for example, is a beautiful thing.
However, in compiz mode, there is some substantial badness. Firefox's close/resize buttons have completely disappeared, and not infrequently the screen freezes for a couple of seconds. Video looks amazingly jaggy at times.
I've been searching the web, users groups, etc. for ways to improve this annoying, erratic behavior, but no luck so far. Questions to the more experienced than I:
1. Is what I'm experiencing bugs, or is there some magic configuration options that I don't know about?
2. If bugs, where do I post bug reports?
3. Should I conclude that I should have shelled out the massive extra cash and gone with an NVIDIA product? I'm naive at ATI, but it sure feels like it's behind the curve, Linux wise.
In essence, any suggestions on what next to do to have a more enjoyable compiz existence?
Many TIA,
Craig
this is actually a known bug... the ATI driver currently does not handle XV and compiz properly at the same time. Try disabling compiz and see if it fixes the problem.
and as for your other questions...you have two places you can put bug reports up, namely the unofficial bug report system and the linux driver crew feedback.
Thanks super, Dandel, the behavior only appears when I choose compiz using the chooser widget, which is consistent with your explanation.
My question is, can I use compiz without XV? If so, how? Or am I stuck with this bug if I'd like to use compiz?
Many thanks,
Craig
Originally Posted by Dandel
It's not a bug. It's a limitation of DRI and the current X.Org framework.
So is it possible to turn off xv in Fedora and just use compiz? (If so, how? Been trying to figure that out & coming up empty.) Or is it not possible to have an unchoppy compiz with ATI?
If you absolutely must have compiz, You can set Gstreamer to No Xv.
Open a terminal and type in
Go to the video tabCode:gstreamer-properties
and set the Default Output Plugin to (No Xv)
You'll have to close any open videos for settings to take effect.
Pros: It works with compiz and videos don't flash any more
Con: It renders video via CPU
Last edited by MikeEx; 10-11-2008 at 10:59 PM.
Thanks super, but unfortunately the bad behavior remains.
The weird thing is, it's primarily when running Firefox.
So am I correct then that the ghastly conclusion is that my new very expensive FireGL V8600 ATI card--the one that's so big it barely fits in my enclosure--is outperformed by the old NVIDIA card it's supposedly replacing, at least compiz wise? Was I an idiot to replace the old NVIDIA card? Be honest...
Compiz should work fine. Some issues are present, like lack of mipmaps for certain cards (r6xx based cards as far as I can tell) and some performance issues on some of the more demanding effects. As I said before, not being able to play accelerated video streams is more of a DRI limitation than a fault of the driver; that can be "fixed" by either using plain ol' X for playback (both gstreamer and xine have options to set this, or the idividual player can do it as well) or run the streams on fullscreen mode with no other active window on-screen.
Compiz does work until I'm using Firefox (which unfortunately I use often.) At that point, the window lacks the close/minimize/resize buttons which all of the other windows do have (weird) and when scrolling the mouse/window freezes, often for several seconds. If I'm not using compiz, these problems are not evident.
For a long time now, I've grown used to using compiz to select windows and desktops--I'm highly visually oriented and to me it's the primary reason I don't use a Mac. So to have a system which now allows me to move around on my desktops but once I'm at an application I use commonly (Firefox), it's somewhat frustrating to have to then unswitch compiz.
Using gstreamer-settings to unset Xv didn't seem to make any difference.
Any other ideas?
Many TIA,
Craig
P.S. Another place where I can see quite a difference is when I'm running video in iTunes inside VMware. If compiz is on, even in fullscreen exclusive mode, the video is really choppy. Gstreamer-settings unsetting Xv didn't help. If I turn off compiz, the problem disappears.
Likewise, if I'm running AutoCAD 2007 inside VMware, I can't use it as the cursor freezes often with compiz on. Turning compiz off, the problem goes away.
Both of those applications don't bother me so much as watching video or using AutoCAD I'm inside that app for a long time, so turning compiz off then on is no big deal. But Firefox in Fedora is bothersome, as I'll often be moving between desktops (flipping around the desktop cube) cutting and pasting, etc.
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