[compiz] Compiz 8.6 on openSuSE 11.0 -- Success! But need help with a few issues.

[David C. Rankin]

On 05/19/2010 01:42 AM, Danny Baumann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> ... you're mixing compiz-0.8.6 with plugins-main and plugins-unsupported
> of 0.8.2. There was an ABI bump inbetween, so this isn't going to work.
> 

Danny,

	Thanks, you nailed this one. I figured this out when a did another update and
yast recommended deleting the 8.2 unsupported package and installing the 8.6
plugins. ( I don't know how that slipped by -- another DUNCE cap issue)

>> Strange, 8.6 intentionally ignored my existing config in
>> ~/.config/compizconfig and created a new configuration in
>> ~/.config/compizconfig-1, which was fine because it left my 8.2 config as a
>> reference. If interested, the 8.2 config is here:
> 
> That sounds ... weird, and upstream libcompizconfig definitely doesn't
> do that. Dominique, is there some magic involved in that in your
> packages? ;-)
> 

	However it happened, this is what resulted:

09:23 alchemy:~/.config/compiz> l
drwx------  2 david dcr 4096 2009-12-29 18:23 compizconfig/
drwx------  2 david dcr 4096 2010-05-18 18:49 compizconfig-1/
-rw-r--r--  1 david dcr   15 2010-01-03 00:37 compiz-manager
-rw-r--r--  1 david dcr    0 2010-01-03 00:37 enable-compiz
-rw-r--r--  1 david dcr  103 2010-05-06 10:48 fusion-icon

	No big deal. It was a good test to go back and individually configure each of
the plugins to see how 8.6 behaved. At least it is consistent. It did the same
thing on my i586 box:

09:20 zephyr:~> l .config/compiz
drwx------  2 david dcr   4096 2008-10-07 00:29 compizconfig/
drwx------  2 david dcr   4096 2010-05-18 10:45 compizconfig-1/
-rw-r--r--  1 david users    0 2008-05-01 15:56 disable-compiz
-rw-r--r--  1 david dcr    103 2010-05-04 03:01 fusion-icon

> 
> I vote for a driver problem. Neither cube, nor rotate or cubeaddon were
> touched between 0.8.2 and 0.8.6.
> 

	Possible, but doubtful. I say that because adjusting the timestep has the cube
or cylinder spinning fast as lightning, smoothly, with no jerks or anything else
that looks like the gpu or driver is having difficulty keeping up with the
redraws, etc. That said, it may be a problem with the way the new libraries
interact with the fglrx driver. Up through 7.8, there were NO problems at all
with either keyboard or mouse rotation speed. Beginning in 8.2, the keyboard
rotation was like it was in slow motion, but mouse rotate continued to be fine.
(previously posted here)

	In 8.6, the keyboard rotate was back to 'perfect', but with mouse rotate, the
'amount of angular rotation' had decreased to about 1/2 a revolution for your
normal mouse left/right movement. I don't know what setting controls the (amount
of rotation)/(horiz. mouse movement), but that is what caused the rotation to
look slow. Playing with the timestep (which I guess is just some non-linear
multiplier for the amount of rotation/mouse movement has the thing spinning like
a top. The timestep adjustment just has the side-effect of causing the
single-step keyboard rotate to 'over-rotate' before settling into view. But like
mentioned before it is MUCH improved over 8.2.

>> What I can't figure out is how can 'Cube Gears' work, but not 'Photowheel'?? A
>> screenshot of the current 8.6 setup:
> 
> You probably need to recompile photowheel, you didn't install it as part
> of a package, did you?

	Yes, Dominique advised that the plugins-unsupported, still won't compile, so I
don't have the plugin. That became painfully obvious after the last updated that
deleted the 8.2 unsupported package and installed the 8.6 version of
plugins-main that cured all the check/magic uncheck problems.

	Thank you for all your help. 8.6 is really in great shape. You guys have done a
great job in the past year. Think about it. Through the challenges of near civil
war, compiz moved forward, became further refined, continues to wipe the floor
with kde desktop effects, and is in great shape. That is -- a job well done :p



-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com