settings to improve Desktop effects

[rwanou]

Hi all,

I just installed Kubuntu 8.04 over a clean system. My hardware is quite good (Core 2 duo E6750, 2Gb dual RAM and NVidia 6600GT over AGP, 128 Mb)
I was really hoping to find all the desktop effects to run very smooth, but i'm surprised by some lagging...

So I would like to make this topic some kind of survey to see what are the different configs and more important, the XGL settings set to make the effects run really good.

to start with me, my xorg.conf contains this 2 options, but no more :

Section "Screen"
  (...)
  Option   "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
 Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

What do I need to enjoy fully all these sweet and practicle effects?

Thanks in advance

[dibl]

Re: settings to improve Desktop effects

Do you have the Nvidia proprietary driver installed? Which version? If you have an Nvidia icon in your KMenu>System folder, open it to find out.

[rwanou]

Re: settings to improve Desktop effects

Yes, i do have Nvidia proprietary drivers installed. The effects would not even run with the default nv driver.

I have tried also switching from "openGL" and "Xrender" and noted this differences :
openGL : quite fast "desktop grid effects", meaning that my 4 desktop zoom out quite fast. nevertheless, any little visual effect consumes resources, e.g. the effect around the "maximize' and "close" buttons from the windows (i have the monitor in the corner). All the "sliding" effects lag a little
Xrender : all sliding effects are very fluid, but displaying all my desktops or windows side by side takes a lot of time

All this effects are running OK but not perfect. Maybe i'm expecting too much, but i was hopping that with my hardware things would be a little smoother. I only activated the most useful effects, not everything at once.

[dibl]

Re: settings to improve Desktop effects

Your CPU hardware is pretty fast, but that AGP connection is not as fast as PCI-E. I dunno -- it sounds like you have done everything you can do to make Compiz run fast.

[rwanou]

Re: settings to improve Desktop effects

I'm not running compiz, but KDE4 desktop effects. And it is confusing indeed. Even if I'm using AGP, read about people having a lighter configuration than me and being very content with the effects.
Hopefully someone has the same conf as me and will post he's settings in order to help me and others find the right settings....

[Nate]

Re: settings to improve Desktop effects

Personally, I don't have this bit at all:

Section "Extensions"
 Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

I remember that was important with compiz...but maybe it's not necessary with kwin? I really don't know, just saying that I don't have that section.