Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

[Melcar]

I have a couple of questions/concerns, both regarding Kwin's desktop effects.

1) Do the desktop cylinder/sphere effects work? No matter what I try I can't get them to turn on. Result is the same whether I'm using my laptop's 200M with radeon or my desktop with a HD4850 and fglrx.

2) When I turn on desktop effects (either xterm or opengl) my graphics card switches to 3D mode and stays like that unless I turn the effects off. There is no load on the GPU, but the temperature increases due to the higher clocks and voltage are clearly there. I find this odd because back when I was using GNOME + Compiz my card never behaved like this.

[Rog131]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

These:
> Bug 210141: Inform user why cylinder/sphere don't work
> Desktop sphere and cylinder in KDE 4.2 inactive
suggest that (with the ATI/AMD) you will need fglrx (OpenGL Shader support) and maybe restart the kwin with the command:

KWIN_DIRECT_GL=1 kwin --replace &

[Melcar]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

Nope. In fact, that command "killed" my effects and could not get them on without having to reinstall my drivers.

[sithlord48]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

if you really want those effects you may want to try compiz

[Melcar]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

I hate Compiz. Buggy like hell. Came over to KDE because of the nice integration with the new effects. Don't really care for it anyways; it's not like I'm spinning cubes/spheres all day . Of more concern is the second point. Don't know why it's doing that. Need to try another distro and see if the problem persists.

[sithlord48]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

see rogs131's advice above seams like to could be a bug w/ a possible simple fix

[Melcar]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

Don't know. I don't have a different chip to test it on. Could be just the drivers, because there are other effects I can't turn on (looking glass, explosion, fall apart).

[sithlord48]

Re: Questions Regarding Desktop Effects in Kubuntu (Karmic)

when i use kwin i also get some effects that don't work correctly, if i use compiz the same plugins work , i.e exploding windows..