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Compiz by default in Ubuntu 7.10
Filed under: Compiz, UbuntuWow, I haven’t posted anything here for awhile.
Anyway, in a Technical Board meeting yesterday it was decided that we will have Compiz enabled by default in Ubuntu 7.10, barring any obscene blowups before the beta. Woohoo! 
I spent a couple hours today going through all the bugs open against compiz in Ubuntu and most of them seem like small problems. Worst case scenario the person can’t get compiz working at all but that’s to be expected.
While I was going through the list of bugs I pointed out some of the more annoying yet simple looking ones to upstream and we’ve already got fixed for them in gutsy now. I’ve got about 12 bugs I’ll be dealing with in the next few days. About half of them are little configuration tweaks so that’s obviously not something for upstream. The rest are just an excuse to get back into the actual compiz/compiz-fusion code again. I’ve spent so much time dealing with users and packaging I haven’t had much time to actually write some code. We’ll see how it goes.
So, now is the time to file bugs if you have them. Don’t wait until after the beta (beta freeze is the 20th) to jump in and start complaining.
35 Responses to “Compiz by default in Ubuntu 7.10”
Ok, but what with these users that have unsupported hardware? Option to select at install time, like it’s done in Sabayon linux?
Seems to me there is still a problem playing videos when compiz is enabled with intel video.
* Mplayer works, but it’s choppy
* vlc works somewhat as of today or yesterday, but the video stays on top and it doesn’t work with the cube.
* totem just crashes
* xfvideo just crashes
* gxine just crashes
To sum, to say that it “works” is a little stretch of the truth.
Source of info?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/134578
I reported this bug because it was systematic.
I will give another try with a fresh reinstall of gutsy before the end of the week.
I had this bug with my Geforce 6800 (driver nvidia-glx) AND my firegl (ati radeon).
I may need guidance to track this bug, the debuggingXorg way.
If the bug keeps going, who should I contact?
Hey, soz. Did not know u were part of Ubuntu team :$
[...] Fuente: realistanew [...]
Is Compiz and XV not working together on the Intel driver one of the “critical” bugs that will be worked out (or around, though the current workarounds, XAA or a GL imagesink, all seem problematical in some way)?
It’d be a shame to not have things working nicely for the one (I think) open driver that actually supports 3d.
I’m not sure whether removing Metacity by default on Ubuntu is a good idea, it’s way more mature than Compiz.
Travis,
I’m glad to see this post.
Could you make sure that bug 88152 is looked at, I think this is something that should really be fixed…
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22/+bug/88152
There is a potential dor a lot of user frustration there, starting with mine, of course
Nico
Will a VIA integrated chipset work then?
I tried to use Beryl on Fedora and on Ubuntu with nVidia closed drivers.
The problem that I’ve got is that opening many (not so many, actually) windows resulted in black windows.
If i remember correctly, this was due to a bug of the driver.
Are things changed with Compiz?
Derek, the -intel is not preferred over i810. The i810 received some xv+compiz fixes, which have not been carried over to -intel because at that time i810 was the default.
Falling back to i810 is not option either because it fails to work with widescreen modes (2/3 of the new monitors sold are TFT panels with widescreen resolution - and Intel holds 60% of the display adapter market actually), it’s a constant problem for new users and is driving people away.
It’s a small mess that someone *MUST* fix before release. Getting xv AND compiz AND widescreen modes work out of the box for over half of the target users is imperative. This is the most important open bug for Gutsy atm of them _all_.
Erm, “intel is not preferred” -> “intel IS preferred” in fact. Sorry about that.
I would say compiz failing to redraw the screen correctly after you switch resolution (with xrandr/gnome-display-properties) is a bit worse than someone on being able to start compiz. People think their machine crashed because the picture on the screen is (1) corrupt and (2) doesn’t change. They end up rebooting because the workaround (Alt-F2, compiz –replace, Enter) is very unobvious.
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/102323
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/139292
Last time I tried compiz, I had connecting to the box running compiz with vnc, everything seemed to work but the screen wasn’t updated (probably related to XDamage).
It is mid September and my Gutsy system crashes constantly with desktop effects enabled. I get black windows, completely white ones when I switch users, I can’t get to a virtual console to kill jobs that might be causing problems and get other random crashes while playing 3d games and videos. It’s nice to see a push to resolve these issues but I’ll very impressed (surprised?) if you stabilize the system before the final release date. Remember, this is the default so by default new users will get a crashy system. It would be the worst decision ever made by Ubuntu. Also remember that some issues cannot be resolved because they reside in closed source video drivers. nVidia has been promising to fix the black window bug for over a year now but have yet to release a fix.
It works! I’ve been on the tribe 5 with daily updates. Works awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[...] Se anima a la gente a que reporten sus fallos, y testeen la estabilidad del entorno, y que no esperemos hasta el último día (la versión freeze lista para pasar a la release será el día 20 de este mes). No obstante, aunque se diga que lo traerá en este post, a tan poco tiempo de la salida de la nueva versión ahora en octubre,no me inspira mucha confianza. Fuente: realistanew [...]
[...] en LunaPark6 que hablan tanto de Gutsy Gibbon en sà como de Compiz Fusion - que al fin se ha confirmado, formará parte de esta distro de serie - asà que me gustarÃa hacer un breve repaso de las [...]
Will Compiz also be the default window manager on Kubuntu?
XV and Intel do *not* work. It’s quite easy to verify this with gstreamer-properties. There seems to be some sort of confused denial about this in the Ubuntu camp, because whilst there are bugs reported and marked as ‘high’ against xserver-xorg-video-intel, they are assigned to nobody and have remained as such for months.
This is a popular chipset, in many laptops as well as MacMinis and the like. Please do not ignore it, and do not suggest that we revert to CPU-hogging, choppy non-xv video. This is a free driver, so there’s none of the usual “oh, it’s the nasty corporations” get-out clause.
This is a very bad decision, Xorg is just not ready.
Why is Ubuntu completely ignoring the issues? The only thing I can think of is that gutsy will have very rough edges for the benefit of the next LTS release.
http://hoegsberg.blogspot.com/2007/08/compiz-and-fedora.html
By the way, I should add that I *do* appreciate your efforts to fix compiz. It has come a long way at its window manager job.
What about Java applications that have an issue with compiz/beryl? This is a bug from Java, not Ubuntu, but still affecting users.
Kind Regards
Yes, what about Compiz by default on Kubuntu Gutsy? Or do we need to wait until KDE4?
[...] Fuente: realistanew [...]
I’m much impressed by the gutsy. Especially by the the changes which I spotted and explained in my article about Ubuntu 7.10 changes.
Hi, I wrote a review about Compiz by default in Gutsy and added some proposals there. I didn’t know where to post them (I didn’t felt bug reports where appropriate), so I just incorporated them in the article.
I’m curious what you think about them and maybe point me to the appropriate place to discuss this.
You can find the article in my blog linked above.
I Agree with this Post
Someone Really needs to fix widescreen xv/compiz for intel, i have to use intel driver for widescreen to work on my external lcd.. and still have issues with compiz and video.. (using beta gusty)
erik - September 13, 2007 2:59 am
Derek, the -intel is not preferred over i810. The i810 received some xv+compiz fixes, which have not been carried over to -intel because at that time i810 was the default.
Falling back to i810 is not option either because it fails to work with widescreen modes (2/3 of the new monitors sold are TFT panels with widescreen resolution - and Intel holds 60% of the display adapter market actually), it’s a constant problem for new users and is driving people away.
It’s a small mess that someone *MUST* fix before release. Getting xv AND compiz AND widescreen modes work out of the box for over half of the target users is imperative. This is the most important open bug for Gutsy atm of them _all_.
Intel + Compiz + Xv should work just fine. The patch for i810 is in intel too and the intel driver is patched to prefer overlay video over textured video since textured video doesn’t work when using compiz unless you use EXA (this is why the gma965 is blacklisted).
Too early to activate Compiz by default. Leave that to companies like Dell, because they know exactly what kind of hardware are using on it. People will think Ubuntu sucks as soon they see the first problem related to the video card. Why you just don’t leave metacity as usual? You cannot watch a complete movie with compiz running, you cannot even use frostwire (java software) etc, etc, etc
Ubuntu is pretty enough without Compiz.
Give to the people a solid operative system, not one fancy, buggy operative system that the companies or business will never take or use seriously in a productive environment!!!
Movies work fine, java works fine. Are you even using gutsy?
I’m using Gutsy RC on an inspiron 1420 and compiz and video playback do not work together. It appears that the current xorg server does not play well with exa. I tried enabling it, but xorg only crashes. Someone built an xserver, which removes a seemingly unrelated patch, that does run exa, but I noticed that the graphics are slightly messed up and scrolling is a bit choppy. Using the interface feels “rough.”
So from what I can tell the only “work-around” is to enable/disable compiz depending on whether I want to watch video at the moment.
Hrm, compiz should not even start on your system without you forcing it.
Just a FYI..
With the Intel drivers the 2.2.0 release for xserver-xorg-video-intel solved the ‘Xv’ problem.
The change is that EXA support is now stable enough that it the Intel drivers default to using it. EXA does not have the same issue as XAA regarding the overlay.. So now video playback for compiz on Intel can be fast and pretty.
(this is on debian unstable. I do not know about the aviability of the driver for Gutsy)
But the problem still exists for OpenGL applications. Hopefully there is a fix for that that I don’t know.
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