Lions, and Tigers, and XGL! Oh My!

[digger]

I thought Kubuntu held off on a "composite" window manager pending KDE4. Because of that I held off on upgrading to 7.10 until KDE4 was out. I was greatly surprised to find out that XGL became the default behavior for KDE3 sessions. The interface was much slower on the same hardware with XGL and I could not get OpenGL apps (mostly games based on the Q3 engine) to go full screen.

The work around I found was to disable XGL by `mkdir ~/.config/xserver-xgl && touch ~/.config/xserver-xgl/disable` This leads me to a few questions.

Why was XGL made the default for KDE3 "sessions?"
Is this behavior the byproduct of my upgrade or the same with a clean install?
Has anyone gotten Beryl to work without XGL yet?
Is XGL required for KDE4 or can I use "native/proprietary" nvidia GL libs/drivers?

The full screen OpenGL apps and overall performance of XGL is not what I would call acceptable yet. For example, with XGL I get a top 5 second score of around 3200FPS with glxgears where with the nvidia native I get near 9200. There is a .5-1.5 second delay in simply clicking the kmenu where native is instant.

[john14424]

Re: Lions, and Tigers, and XGL! Oh My!

I think what you mean is you are getting 3200 Frames every 5 seconds, not 3200 FPS. In any case, when I installed Kubuntu, XGL was not turned on as default. However, there is an option, which I have switched off. I agree that XGL needs a bit more polish, as it does slow down process times a bit. As with any other operating system, the more memory, higher CPU, FSB and other variants, make all the difference.
As far as getting Beryl to work without XGL. Beryl is a 3-D interface, so I would have to believe it will not run without a 3-D engine to display it's effects.
XGL is not required for KDE4 or KDE4.01, and I've used just standard Nvidia drivers with it. The biggest "Outward" change to KDE4 or KDE4.01 is the Plasma desktop, which does not rely on 3-D rendering for it's effect.

[digger]

Re: Lions, and Tigers, and XGL! Oh My!

No, I meant 3200. Changing to the nvidia-glx-new improved. See below:

rheilman@hermes:~$ ps -ef | grep -i xgl
rheilman 6662 6597 0 13:40 ?    00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/share/xserver-xgl/Xgl-lockfile-wrapper :1 -accel xv:fbo -accel glx:pbuffer -nolisten tcp -fullscreen -br +xinerama
rheilman 6667 6662 7 13:40 ?    00:00:01 Xgl :1 -accel xv:fbo -accel glx:pbuffer -nolisten tcp -fullscreen -br +xinerama
rheilman 6779 6777 0 13:40 pts/1  00:00:00 grep -i xgl
rheilman@hermes:~$ glxgears
16329 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3251.472 FPS
19934 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3980.431 FPS
20078 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3996.801 FPS
20143 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4017.460 FPS
20241 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4034.069 FPS
20372 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4070.814 FPS
20563 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4099.684 FPS
19499 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3881.411 FPS
18727 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3733.315 FPS
19057 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3807.111 FPS
X connection to :1.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
rheilman@hermes:~$

(logout - login without XGL)

rheilman@hermes:~$ ps -ef | grep -i xgl
rheilman 7014 7012 0 13:43 pts/1  00:00:00 grep -i xgl
rheilman@hermes:~$ glxgears
41851 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8370.064 FPS
41944 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8388.619 FPS
41953 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8390.572 FPS
41947 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8389.331 FPS
41939 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8387.609 FPS
41942 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8388.370 FPS
41950 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8389.950 FPS
41707 frames in 5.0 seconds = 8341.227 FPS
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
rheilman@hermes:~$

Did you install clean or upgrade? If you did clean and it was not enabled by default then it must be because I had previously experimented with Beryl/XGL in Edgy. In Edgy I had to create a separate login type of Beryl/XGL that I could choose from the kdm login screen. I only ran Fiesty long enough to upgrade through it to Gutsy.

There must be something about Beryl that I am not understanding. To me it should be able to use the standard, 3d-accelerated xorg server. Regardless I found Beryl to be more problematic than it is worth. To many crashes, window decoration issues, resize problems, complete window manager crashes, etc. To me a computer is a hammer. I don't need a hammer that lights up different colors as you swing harder if it means you hit your thumb more often. I really don't need fall off my ladder either. =)

[cpradio]

Re: Lions, and Tigers, and XGL! Oh My!

digger, what card do you run for your graphics? I don't come close to those numbers running a GeForce 7800 GT. Are you running in SLI mode? Sorry to get off topic, I am just curious.