It’s hip2b2

Note: AIGLX and Compiz is so cool. I saw it running on one of my students Ubuntu laptop. I install AIGLX without any problem. I got the break window on minimize to work. However, when I build compiz (and rebuilt Mesa) I was not able get compiz to work properly. So, I stopped it for a while. Maybe somebody is nice enough to try this out and see what I am missing. I have a Intel i915 graphics card. Here are the steps I took to install Compiz AIGLX on Fedora Core 5. Good luck!

Here is a short description of the Fedora Core AIGLX project:

The Fedora Rendering Project’s goal is to create a compelling end-user experience for the Free Software desktop. The desktop should be attractive, it should use sophisticated visual effects where appropriate, it should perform well, with near-instantaneous response and smooth transitions, and it should provide a rich range of visual metaphors for use in applications.

To create this user experience, we are enhancing and building on top of a number of technologies. Cairo provides a 2D drawing API. Pango provides text layout capabilities. OpenGL is used for 3D graphics. The COMPOSITE extension to X allows us to combine toplevel windows into a desktop in sophisticated ways.

Here is a short description of Compiz:

Compiz brings to life a variety of visual effects that make the Linux desktop easier to use, more powerful and intuitive, and more accessible for users with special needs. Compiz combines together a window manager and a composite manager using OpenGL for rendering. A “window manager” allows the manipulation of the multiple applications and dialog windows that are presented on the screen. A “composite manager” allows windows and other graphics to be combined together to create composite images. Compiz achieves its stunning effects by doing both of these functions.

Currently, it is a pain to get Compiz to work with AIGLX (which allows us to use a modular Xorg instead of replacing it with monolithic Xgl). So here is a bit of documentation and some packaged RPMS.

1. Install aiglx in Fedora Core 5. Refer to this page for details instructions. If you are in a rush, you can download this aiglx.repo file into your /etc/yum.repo.d/ directory and type the following:

yum --enablerepo=aiglx update

2. Add “Composite” to xorg configuration like this:

Section "extensions"
Option "Composite"
EndSection

3. Add Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps” and remove all other option in device section like this :

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation Intel Default Card"
Driver "i810"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

4. Activate AIGLX.

gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool true

5. Install Compiz-AIGLX dependencies.

yum -y install GConf-devel
yum -y install libpng-devel startup-notification-devel
yum -y install gtk+ libwnck pango cairo GConf2 libXrender
yum -y install gnome-desktop-devel control-center-devel

6. Install the following updated Mesa libraries. I built this from the 20060516 Mesa CVS in freedesktop.org. The Mesa libraries above are not enough to build compiz. Here is a link to the SRPM.

rpm -Uvh mesa-libGL-6.5-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh mesa-libGL-devel-6.5-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh mesa-libGLU-6.5-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh mesa-libGLU-devel-6.5-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh mesa-libGLw-6.5-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh mesa-libGLw-devel-6.5-6.i386.rpm

7. (Optional) If you want to build Compiz from source. You need to install the control-center-devel package. This is because compiz requires the gnome-window-settings headers. However, Fedora Core 5 does not come with this package. I don’t know for what reason. So I grabbed the source RPM from the Fedora Website and built them myself. Here they are for download:

rpm -Uvh control-center-2.14.1-1.fc5.3.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh control-center-devel-2.14.1-1.fc5.3.i386.rpm

8. Grab Compiz-AIGLX RPM I built.

rpm -Uvh compiz-20060516-1.i386.rpm

Everything builds and installs cleanly. But, it does not work because I get the following error:

compiz: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
compiz: Failed to manage screen: 0
compiz: No managable screens found on display :0.0

I looked at the Mesa binaries I built and the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap function (and its corresponding macros) is available. I hope to update this once I finally get it working. Good luck!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 7:56 am and is filed under Open source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.