GeForce FX 5200 & XGL/Compiz
 

Hi again guys, I've been having a bit of trouble with XGL/Compiz Desktop Effects...

When I run gnome-xgl-settings, the Desktop Effects Settings window comes up. I have an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 installed on the machine, Linux recognisees it under Hardware devices. However, Desktop Effects comes up with:

nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

Underneath that it says:

Your graphics card is not known to be supported. It might or might not support Xgl, and it might or might not be able to run Xgl at full speed.

However, in order to use Xgl, you need to first install a special video driver for your video card. Press the button below to run the Software Updater tool to install this driver.

However, I know for a fact that my graphics card is supported by XGL/Compiz.. and it is also listed in the xgl-hardware-whitelist. However it says otherwise. :(

When I click to run the Software Updater with the button underneath, it just says 'x11-video-nvidia' is not available or fully up to date.

Does anybody have any ideas?

I remember having a similar issue with SUSE when I used it a while ago, and I also have the same card (geforce 5200). I didn't like SUSE very much so I just ended up switching distributions, but to solve your problem, for starters:

Do you see an nvidia splashscreen when you start X? (That would mean you do have the proprietary driver installed). You could also check your xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf); if it says in the "Device" section that the driver is "nv" instead of "nvidia," you need to install the proprietary driver, or it's impossible to use XGL. Go to nvidia's website and download the latest linux driver (1.0.8776). It's sort of a hassle to install, but nvidia's directions are pretty clear.

See if that changes anything. I used to run Mandriva, which (in the latest version) has a configuration utility to set up XGL/compiz, but I couldn't get it to work with my card. I eventually just ended up switching to Fedora Core 5 and finally figured out how to get XGL running manually. The bottom line is, I think that distribution-provided configuration utilties for XGL don't work well with the geforce 5200 card, but before you give up on configuring XGL through the SUSE utility, at least make sure you have the proprietary nvidia driver installed.

getting the right driver from nvidia worked for me. spinning cubes and all!

Thanks guys! I found out it was a combination of my motherboard and that PCI card that was causing the problem. Anyway, I've got it fixed now and all it took was editing the xorg.conf manually :)

So now I've got Beryl working too. By the way, I switched to Ubuntu. I actually think it's much nicer :-)