Have got GLX working for the X server and gather, possibly wrongly, that this should give 3D effects.

Willy nilly how do you tell if 3D effects are working? Don't really know what they are to be frank. Thanks any help.

Do not now how it is you're distros .
But sometimes if you ask for properties of monitor and the graphic card it
comes a large window in it there is small one telling you about the 3 D enabled or not

a) The driver has to support it
b) you have to enable it in your xorg.conf (Load glx, Composite enable plus your driver specific command)
c) you have to have OpenGL installed, if you want to use Compiz

With running X, check "xdpyinfo" - you should have at least "GLX" mentioned.

After that, you need a windowmanager with a compositor already included (Xfce's WM, Metacity of Gnome, kwm from KDE or Compiz) or xcompmgr has to be started.

The difference is mainly wether or not the compositor uses Xorg's Xrender/Xcomposite extension or requires OpenGL to render with GLX_texture_from_pixmap. AFAIK, xcompmgr and metacity and xfwm use only Xrender/Xcomposite; Compiz requires GLX_texture_from_pixmap/OpenGL support.

After that, you can use transparency and dropped shadows at least.

Grab xcompmgr (http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/) and drop some shadows for testing. (see xcompmgr --help)

Easiest way is usually:

That means OpenGL (3D) accel is enabled.

Huge thanks girls. I've got 'true' transparancy- all windows and background show through windows above - and drop shadows. So it must be working then. But I'll try the other stuff to be sure.

Despite the amazing nature of transparancy I've still gone back to Enlightenment 16 because of the soul destroying, windows-like, uglyness of the thing you look at for hours.

Ha ha! TexMex, lugo called you a girl!!

(Note the plural usage of "girl", though I'm sure lugo meant the singular as they were replying to Su-Shee. Does anyone know what gender Su-Shee is? )

lol, well actually it's fine with me as long as it is also mentioned that I'm a lesbian