Transparencies and Shadows in Fedora Core 5

pafinator11 · 04-22-2006, 02:49 PM

I used to use suse 10 and KDE and if you installed X Composite Manager, you could make windows transparent/translucent and you could also make shadows. How can you accomplish that in Fedora Core 5 and Gnome?

Thanks in advance,
Paul

pafinator11 · 04-22-2006, 07:06 PM

Ok, I got X Composite Manager working I have it running perfectly in KDE but I would like to use it in gnome, I cannot find an rpm of the utility, xcompmgr, and attempting to compile it spits out errors. How can I enable it in gnome?

Hitboxx · 04-22-2006, 09:05 PM

Never heard of X Composite Manager. Are you referring to KDE Settings > Appearance & Themes > Style option? Coz i got my transparency effects from here. As for Gnome menu transparency effects i dont think its possible (atleast that i know of) :/

cs-cam · 04-22-2006, 11:50 PM

Quote:

Never heard of X Composite Manager.

Then why answer?

OP: What errors are you getting? You need to be more specific, however with the Metacity in FC5 you may not need it as it's built to work with the fancy AIGLX stuff is it not?

jschiwal · 04-23-2006, 12:05 AM

You can also find the KDE dialog to turn on and configure transparency and shadows by right clicking on a top window border and selecting "Configure Window Behavior ...". Then after setting up you Windows Behavior to use transparency and shadows, you need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

The last section needs a line added:

Code:

Section "Extensions"
      Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

This won't work if you use the "nvidia" driver. You will get a "caught SIG 11 error". ( Not an exact quote ) It will work with the generic "nv" driver, but beyond shadows, translucency may operate too slowly without acceleration. So this is a catch 22 situation.
NVidia may have it's own equivalent option that you need to use instead.

cs-cam · 04-23-2006, 01:25 AM

He's trying to use GNOME, not KDE.

pafinator11 · 04-23-2006, 10:08 AM

ok I figured out that I was wrong in calling it X Composite Manager as it is the X Composite Extension, I figured out that it comes preinstalled and I modified the Xorg.conf to use it. I got it working for KDE, no problem and I do have nvidia glx drivers working at the same time. X Composite Manager is actually a utility used to make use of the shadows of the X Composite Extension in other Desktop Enviroments, such as Gnome, to go along with that you need transset for transparencies. I downloaded the source for X composite manager and I attempted to compile it, heres what I got:

Quote:

checking for xcomposite xfixes xdamage xrender... Package xcomposite was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xcomposite.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'xcomposite' found Package xfixes was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xfixes.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'xfixes' found Package xdamage was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xdamage.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'xdamage' found Package xrender was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `xrender.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'xrender' found
configure: error: Library requirements (xcomposite xfixes xdamage xrender) not met; consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if your libraries are in a nonstandard prefix so pkg-config can find them.

I don't know all that much about compiling so I couldnt figure out what it was asking me to do. I do know that xcomposite is installed, I am pretty sure xrender is installed but I'm not positive about xfixes and xdamage.
Any ideas?

jschiwal · 04-26-2006, 03:50 AM

Update:
I just updated the nvidia driver, and now transparency and shadows works great!

First I logged off, and logged into a virtual terminal as root.
Then I ran "init 3" to stop x windows.

Then "cd /usr/share/doc/nvidia"
This is where SuSE stored the driver installer.
Then I ran "./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-7676-pkg2.run --update"

There was one problem however. The prompts didn't printout properly, and it was difficult reading the prompts. However, when I was finished, I edited my xorg.conf file. Then after changing the settings in KDE to use transparency, and logging out and in again, the results were very positive.

And my laptop only has a GeForce4 420.