Beryl options and nvidia

Marc Schwartz marc_schwartz at comcast.net
Fri Jan 5 20:13:05 UTC 2007


Gérard Milmeister wrote:
> I have beryl running with nvidia prop. drivers with the following
> options:
> beryl --use-cow --force-aiglx --skip-gl-yield
> There are now problems with black windows etc... that may appear with
> other options. The X server is running with increased priority (set by
> using schedtool), so there responsiveness is good running tvtime
> smoothly even under system load.
> There is one small issue however: Before a menu window is filled with
> content, there may appear some artifacts in the window background. These
> disappear if I use the --force-nvidia option, but then UI responsiveness
> is distintively slower and tvtime does not run smoothly anymore.
> Is this is a known issue?

There are known problems with the current nVidia drivers and the use of 
Compiz/Beryl, secondary to the current incomplete implementation of 
texture_from_pixmap (TFP) required for compositing. Based upon the 
present timeline since nVidia was made aware of these issues (> 2 
months), a fix appears to be a low priority for them and their official 
line is that they are still "investigating the problem".  Taken 
literally, that would suggest that they have not yet even identified the 
problem, as opposed to "we are investigating possible solutions".

Even more interesting is that their beta driver web page at:

   http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html

appears to be now totally blank save the header graphic, presuming that 
there is not a server problem.

In the mean time, with the updates to Beryl version 0.1.4 in the past 
few days here, there is a setting either at the command line or using 
the Beryl Settings Manager (Advanced Beryl Options -> Rendering Path) 
that seems to help.

At the CLI use:

   --use-copy

which I presume uses a (slower?) mechanism other than TFP for compositing.

This seems to reduce the incidence of black windows (presumably due to 
reduced VRAM requirements) and in playing with disabling some of the 
plug-ins, is finally making Beryl at least usable here, though far from 
what I had with either Compiz-Quinn or Beryl under FC5 using XGL and the 
older 8XXX series nVidia drivers along with mesa-cvs.

I have played around with other options, such as the one's that you have 
tried, without consistent effect. There is a great deal of interaction 
between the various Beryl settings and the xorg.conf settings that _may_ 
be relevant to nVidia card performance. There does not yet seem to be a 
consistent solution and may not be until nVidia sees fit to fix the TFP 
problem.

In addition, there is an option in the Beryl Settings Manager under 
Visual Effects -> Window Decoration that needs to be enabled to get 
Emerald (Beryl's WM) to work properly.  Folks having problems getting 
Window Decorations should make sure that this is checked.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz




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