having problems with compiz standalone
 

well, the nvidia driver ncurses installer deleted a file i needed for other things, so i reinstalled whatever package it was from and installed the driver/module from the -current git repo from sbopkg. i followed a few guides online, disabled nouveau and set up xorg.conf to look like so:

i installed all of the slackbuilds that go with compiz except the one for kde (didn't install k) from the same repo as the drivers. i haven't tried any other window managers, but fluxbox starts just fine. anyway, then i copied the config files for compiz-boxmenu to my user's root directory and put a .xinitrc there as well to which i replaced the exec fluxbox part with:

i went through ccsm and added the following: commands, desktop cube, 3d windows, cube reflection and deformation, window decoration, splash, jpg, png, svg, text, dbus, error notifications, mouse polling, wallpaper, move window, resize window, and tile. nothing super-fancy but enough to be functional i think.

anyway, hopefully i covered whatever i screwed up, because when i startx all i have is a black screen with a mouse pointer. can anyone who's been through all this tell me what i did wrong? i've been through everything google could find for me covering the issue.

I was curious and created a .xinitrc (copied from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.fluxbox) loading only emerald and fusion-icon instead of fluxbox as you mention. I got the black screen with the pointer you described.

Then it occurred to me that it would be useful having the fusion-icon notification icon since it provides a "Reload Window Manager" and other options, which means that I needed a panel that provides a notification area such as xfce4-panel or cairo-dock. I tried first cairo-dock then xfce4-panel, both work ok.

Once I got the notification area, I ran ccsm from the fusion-icon menu, enabled the needed plugins and now it works. Maybe you need to run ccsm while compiz is running? Not really sure if that's the cause of the problem, but that's what I did.

I don't have compiz-boxmenu installed so I cannot comment on that one. Also, I found good information here.

Hope that helps.

It does. If I can't get boxmenu configured then I may try a drop down terminal emulator. I'm just glad it's not the nvidia driver.

I keep reading Compton is superior to Compiz and I know KWin is now superior for me than either was. It might be worth a try for you as well.

i am considering kwin with a window decorator. I like how I set up a bunch of undecorated terminals to autostart with fluxbox. I only want to add the neat cylinder effect for workspace switching. is that possible with cairo or compton?

Cairo-dock is only a panel/launcher, probably you meant compiz. If so, then yes, compiz has a few plugins for workspace switching. I don't use compton nor kwin, so I just don't know about those.

cairo is a composite manager similar to compton and... xcompmgr i think it was called? just runs in a separate process so can be used with a different window manager. i don't think they have the workspace animations though. you did solve the problem the thread's about. i was in a hurry this morning but i'll go ahead and mark this as solved. thanks much.