Xfig running on KDE4.3 -slackware 13 64bit- freezes after a few seconds.

gabrielvc · 09-14-2009, 12:05 PM

I am running Slackware 13.0 64, Kde4.3, bit on a laptop with the intel 945GM integrated video card. When running xfig the system just freezes, I even loose the virtual consoles and have to, ejem, reboot!
I do think this is a problem with KDE, since xfig runs just fine on the xfce that comes with the same distro.
Please tell me if there are any log files that I can look into, to get more info about this one.

gabrielvc · 09-30-2009, 07:09 PM

Elv13 · 09-30-2009, 10:40 PM

Did you tried with compositing disabled?
Did you tried with an alternative windows manager (like openbox)?

gabrielvc · 10-01-2009, 12:24 AM

I do not know how to disable compositing for KDE4.

I am actually using xfce4 right now, and everything works just fine, but would like to use KDE4!!!!

lemmens · 01-12-2010, 04:33 AM

Hi,

Had the same problems with xfig, but it seems it can be "solved" by disabling Compositing inside KDE4 before starting xfig. This can be done temporarily by pressing Alt-Shift-F12 . Another way is K-menu -> Computer -> Systems settings -> Desktop -> Suspend Compositing (or disable Effects all together).

Another less elegant trick is to start an extra Xserver on the desktop and run xfig inside that xserver :

Xephyr -screen 1200x900 :3 &
twm -display :3 &
xfig -display :3

I think it is partly because the old Xaw toolkit doesn't know anything about modern graphics desktops and gets confused by new things like transparency and so on.

Someone should take the time to rewrite a good app like xfig using Qt or Gtk. Any volonteers :-) ?

Kees

lemmens · 01-25-2010, 05:46 AM

The problem with xfig freezing with KDE 4 / Slackware 13 seems to be caused by the libXaw3d library !!

If you recompile from scratch without using the libXaw3d.so.8 but instead with the standard libXaw.so.7 (Imakefile : XCOMM #define XAW3D) xfig is rocksolid and never freezes, even with KDE Compositing enabled !!

So, I think the Slack developers should simply recompile xfig without Xaw3d support.

Another way may be replacing the libXaw3d.so.8 softlink and point it to libXaw.so (this seems to work more or less as well) but it may be a lot safer to simply recompile to make everything fit like a glove :-)

regards,
Kees