Greetz
I have googled around and seen that screen tearing is a common problem for Xfce and is in fact one of the reasons for Wayland. Some time ago people changed out the default WM for Compiz which sometimes fixes tearing but causes other problems. A better solution seem to be using Kwin as the compositor.

S0.....
1) Is Kwin the best option these days?
and if it is....
2) What is the best method for Slackers to utilize Kwin for Xfce?

3) Are there other viable options?

Thanks in advance for any opinions, experiences, tutorials

I use Compton with i3 without any issues. Which problems do other people have with it?
By the way, Compton is a mere compositor, not a WM, so you run it in combination with your WM, you don't replace the WM.

You need to fix your Xorg/graphics driver configuration or as a last resort disable composition in xfwm (I believe there is a simple checkbox in standard Xfce's settings).

Before i3 I did used Xfce and windows moving or resizing was fast & fluent even on a poor integrated Intel GA.

If you're using an OEM driver from Nvidia and AMD they should come with their tools already.

Alternatively, there is the DRIConf package you can get from SlackBuilds for the free drivers. You'll probably want to look for enabling VBlank/VSync to avoid tearing.

Thanks for the responses so far but I'm more in favor of using a proper compositor than disabling Xfce's. I have GTX-760 nVidia w/ oem driver set to sync to VBlank and KDE works great but Xfce tears, especially on scrolling Firefox. I've read about Compton but Kwin seems a better choice of the two, though I've yet to see a set of dependencies to do so.
So far I've seen -

kde-Window-Manager-common
kde-Window-Manager
kwin-style-qtcurve
kde-window-manager-gles
kde-style-skulpture
kdeartwork-theme-window
qtcurve
kwin-style-crystal
kwin-style-skulpture
kde-window-manager-active
kde-window-manager-active-gles
kwin-style-dekorator

but those aren't in default full Slack install and some have dependencies of their own. This seems somewhat odd since Kwin works in KDE so I'm somewhat at a loss. Any help appreciated.

I am quite puzzled by that statement, since Compton is a proper compositor.
Anyways, I am also puzzled by the statement that you need extra dependencies for Kwin. Were did you get that list and have you just tried to run Kwin instead of xfwm4?

Hello,

On my laptop, I use Xfce along with the Nvidia 304.xx legacy driver.

I had two choices to fix the tearing :

- Disable the xfwm4 compositor and live without compositing

- Use compton


I chose the latter.

I used this blog post to setup my box :

http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/06/0...iting-in-xfce/

The author gives detailed steps and a sample of configuration file that was perfect for me.

The only dependency required for Compton outside the Slack repo is libconfig which is available on SBo.

The tearing used to piss me off when I was watching some movies in full screen.

Now that's a thing from the past

Hello,

According to this thread, there are tearing issues with kepler nvidia gpu. I have an nvidia GT630 (kepler based), and I had this issue which can be, for most kepler user, solved by activating the attribute ForceFullCompositionPipeline.

Here is the nvidia configuration I use (i.e. /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf) :

Hope this helps.

--
SeB

1 members found this post helpful.

@Tobi and anyone else who somehow took offense - I did not mean to imply that Compton was not a proper compositor. MY comparison was using a proper compositor versus turning off Xfce compositing (Sheeesh...people can be so defensive!) The only thing even vaguely negative about Compton was I prefer Kwin since I have it and I know it works great. That's all.

@phenixia2003 Thank you very much! +Rep. I wasn't aware of that issue and the solution works flawlessly. Although I still will mess with Kwin to see if this also solves the tearing issue while also bringing sweet config possibilities to Xfce, I'm marking this solved.

For those who want to see what I saw about dependencies, as well as what Kwin can do for Xfce, the best I saw was HERE though I don't care a hoot about wobbly windows and all that junk. This other guy is more complete about what Kwin can do but since he's installing on a minimalist distro with pacman/yaourt he doesn't select specifics but rather grabs the whole base as specced by his package manager. That's HERE

PS - I know I can use "kwin --replace" to just try it but I want it Xfce to use it by default and not replace each time and simply adding the xml string doesn't do it (Obviously I'm an xml newb)

PPS - BTW Kwin is smoother scrolling than the nVidia Kepler fix

I did not take offense, sorry if it looked that way. I was just confused by your statements.
On a related note, tearing issues with xfwm4 should be fixed in xfwm4 4.11.0:http://xfce.10915.n7.nabble.com/ANNO...d-td42382.html

OK. Cool. Thx for the heads-up.... better late than never. Maybe it will be just in time for Wayland

Sadly, I don't think that the Xfce's team has the required man power to achieve a Wayland compatibility.

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite a fan of this DE.

But the GTK3 migration has been delayed so you know...

That would be great of course.

Btw, the 4.10 version of xfwm4 was patched by providing a vsync option in xfconf but this feature has never done the trick for me.

I might give the new xfwm4 compositor a try when it comes out from Pat, but my actual solution mentioned above makes me happy.

Well of course, YMMV depending on your choices

I am both saddened and surprised to hear this. It is indeed a gem. I hope the team gets the support they need. I'll look into donating a bit.