I've been using fedora 8 for a while now and want to use the desktop effects.

now I've read through what some have done on here and i'm now coming up with the following error:

]desktop-effects
compiz (core) - Fatal: No sync extension
Xlib: extension "SHAPE" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "SHAPE" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "SHAPE" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "SHAPE" missing on display ":0.0".


any ideas what needs to be done to get this to work?

attached the xorg.conf

To begin with, you need to have a graphics card capable of hardware 3d accelaration and drivers (Linux-specific) for it that enable the system to take advantage of hardware accelaration. Two main names are ATI and nVidia, for which you can rather easily nowadays get the required drivers (usually using your package manager to make it easy).

After you have made sure your card is capable of doing it and have installed the drivers, you can try enabling Compiz-Fusion. Fedora 9 has a menu entry for it: System menu has a Prefences submenu which has Look and feel submenu which holds the Desktop Effects application. Launching it lets you click an "enable" button which tries to start Compiz-Fusion; if it works, you can enable some basic effects and probably install (using the package manager of Fedora) the extra packages of Compiz-Fusion, like the "control center" trough which you can specify what effects exactly are used.

Not sure how much Fedora 8 differs from number 9, but the basic things are the same: you must have hardware that can do it, then you must successfully install and enable drivers that enable hardware accelaration and then you can make sure Compiz-Fusion packages are installed, after which you can enable the effects (install the "control center", that's about the easiest way of configuring Compiz-Fusion). If you don't have good enough hardware or your drivers for the graphics card "don't do" hardware accelaration, Compiz-Fusion probably just fails.

If you are unsure how to make sure you have the right drivers installed or how to install Compiz-Fusion packages, there are Fedora 8 specific howtos on the web. For example this shows how to install Compiz Fusion:

howtoforge.com/compiz-fusion-fedora8-ati-mobility-radeon-9200

Don't mind the 3d card model there - just make sure you have drivers installed for yours (in practice that means proprietary drivers from card manufacturer; open source drivers typically don't take as much out of the card as proprietary drivers do even if the yexist, and usually manufacturers don't make open source drivers at all).

my card is a nvidia..

ive tried modifying the xorg and restarted the computer and it came up with a error in the X server. ive reverted it back to the original xorg file and got the desktop back

ive also read whats been written on the howtoforge website but it still doesn't make desktop effects work

ive got it now

all i had to do was add extmod line to the xorg.conf file