no desktop effects

[calanor]

Hi
I have ati radeon hd 3600 graphics card and i am using stock open source drivers. The desktop effects window shows "Desktop effects are not available on this system due to the following technical issues:" but no issues are mentioned and no desktop effects. What's wrong ?
Also somehow kget and system settings can't read proxy settings while amarok does.

Edit:
Kget works, I think restart was needed.

[Rog131]

Re: no desktop effects

"OpenGL library is unsafe to use"

This with an expendable Kubuntu Maverick installation (> Topic: The ususal pre-release caveats and tips).


Here with the Ati 9600 XT. The desktop effects disappeared with the KDE 4.5.1/New Xorg/something else. I don't keep them on - so i can't say when they disappeared.


Symptoms:
- Silly message: "Desktop effects are not available on this system due to the following technical issues:" - What issues ?
- The "glxinfo | grep -i direct" is telling: "direct rendering: Yes"
- "Disable functionality checks" is not helping


More/useful information of the compositing:

Rule of Thumb

When you get a mysterious error/no start/no audio/no video with the gui, use the cli.
With the cli you usually get the full error message and could do a net search with the error message.

Turning the compositing on:

kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled true

and restarting the kwin:

kwin --replace

kwin(5118) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL vendor is "DRI R300 Project"
kwin(5118) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL renderer is "Mesa DRI R300 (RV350 4152) 20090101 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE TCL DRI2"
kwin(5118) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL version is "1.5 Mesa 7.8.2"
kwin(5118) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: Detected driver "radeon" , version "20090101"
kwin(5118) KWin::Workspace::setupCompositing: KWin has detected that your OpenGL library is unsafe to use, falling back to XRender.
kwin(5118): Failed to initialize compositing, compositing disabled

Searching with the "KWin has detected that your OpenGL library is unsafe "...

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248706
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=226791
etc...


Workaround - not a fix
Using the force - don't worry, be happy settings

Editing the ~/kde/share/config/kwinrc.

Before:

...
DisableChecks=false
...
OpenGLIsUnsafe=true

After:

...
DisableChecks=true
...
OpenGLIsUnsafe=false
...

Konsole:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 kwin --replace

The desktop effects are working...


---edit- added---

> KDE 4.5 - compositing disabled upon login
> Driver dilemma in KDE workspaces 4.5

[Guest]

Re: no desktop effects

Hey Rog131,

Your suggestions worked like a charm. Not ideal, but I have a working KDE 4.5 desktop with effects working as expected.

One can hope these *ahem* issues can be squared away before the final release of Meerkat. It would be a major slap to Kubuntu forcing users to step back in time on their KDE desktop only to move forward with MeerKat.

Thanks again for your detective work.

--
Marcel (Writer and Free Thinker at Large) Gagné
Note: This massagee wos nat speel or gramer-checkered.

[hpg]

Re: no desktop effects

I tried the this workaround, too, but I was not successful. The desktop has the same look and behaviour as before. This is what my glxinfo has to say:

hp@hp:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[Guest]

Re: no desktop effects

Thanks Rog131
Worked great on my ThinkPad T43p (ATI FireGL V3200).

[SPQR]

Re: no desktop effects

Thank you Rog 131.

This quick fix worked for me too.

I'm using the RC at the moment- strange that this bug is here still at this stage.

[dibl]

Re: no desktop effects

After yesterday's updates, using "dist-upgrade", OpenGL compositing is working again as normal on my 10.10 system. No special tweaks needed.

[abalone]

Re: no desktop effects

edit: nevermind, wiping kwinrc resolved it~

[molecule-eye]

Re: no desktop effects

I was previously using OpenGL compositing under Shared Memory mode. Upgrading to 10.10 has caused serious video corruption in that mode now. I've switched to Texture to Pixmap mode but I still get video corruption, though it's not as bad (e.g. things are usable at least), and I've also had to disable functionality checks to get things working in OpenGL mode.

I hope these things are corrected by the release tomorrow, but I'm not too hopeful.

[dibl]

Re: no desktop effects

I hope these things are corrected by the release tomorrow, but I'm not too hopeful.

The coding of 10.10 is looooooooooong over -- what you have today is what you'll have tomorrow, and for many days thereafter.

[molecule-eye]

Re: no desktop effects

Great. This has strengthened my previous but unfulfilled desire to run two copies of Kubuntu, one specifically for testing out new distributions via a dist-upgrade. One day, one day...

[Exterminator13]

Re: no desktop effects

Hi, all!
I had problems with Desktop Effects too...
What I did I simply renamed kwinrc to kwinrc.bak in .kde/share/config in home directory!
First time, system refused to boot. But, after next boot system started with no claims with OpenGL desktop effects!

But before do that you should to be sure that your video driver is installed correctly. If you use open source mesa driver, install mesa-utils package and type in console:

glxinfo | grep render
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RV515 715F) 20090101 TCL DRI2

If you get string "Software rasterizer", you have problems with your video driver!

[Exterminator13]

Re: no desktop effects

looks like it is not reliable... after reboot desktop effects must be switched on manually..