AIGLX mess in FC5-6

[Kristian Høgsberg]

Adam Pribyl wrote:
> First I'd like to say, there is still lot of confusion about AIGXL and 
> composition managers in Fedora. From time the FC5 was released there is 
> not clear statement, wherether the AIGLX is really in Xorg that is 
> distributed with FC as it seems from Release notes
> http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/release-notes-ISO/#id3148356 

The stock FC5 X server does not have AIGLX, it's based on the 7.0 server.

> or it has to be installed separately as described here:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/AiglxOnFedora

Yes, that's why we created the repo.

> According to my experience AIGLX is not included in basic FC instalation 
> and you have to extend the repository to aiglx and update your 
> instalation. Without this you only get flickering screen and loose your 
> window decoration when triing to enable the metacity composition with 
> gconftool-2. If you try to install AIGLX and use compiz from aiglx 
> repository at the moment, you get unresolved dependencies for libwnck >= 
> 2.15.4, in FC5 there is now latest 2.14.3.

libwnck is upgraded now, so you should be able to runs compiz.  Some of the 
packages in the repo have been superceeded by FC5 updates in the meantime, so 
it may be a bit tricky to update at the moment.

> In the case you want to revert AIGLX updates there is no describtion how 
> to do that.

Yeah, there is no good way to downgrade as far as I know.  You have to 
manually download the stock FC5 versions of the RPMs that the aiglx repo has 
installed and then install them using the --oldpackage option to rpm.

> In FC5 gdm configuration, man can choose to use "aiglx" server (Xair). 
> There si no such thing like Xair anymore from official sources. 
> Switching this results in unusable X and hand edits to gdm configuration.

Xair and the gdm choice was one of the first packagings of AIGLX and is no 
longer available or recommended.

> There is nowhere clearly stated what graphics card the AIGLX is 
> confirmed working or was tested on. On the page
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aiglx
> it says all Radeon 7000-9250 is known to work, however, from my personal 
> experience, on Radeon 9200 it is not working as it should (got blue 
> screen with shadows switching with screen with menus and apps - unusable).
> It does not state wherether I have to use for ATI Radeon cards "radeon" 
> driver or "ati" driver or this does not mather.
> 
> I am also curious, wherether AIGLX could work without DRI or not, and I 
> am not alone. There are several people, that report glxinfo says No to 
> render, however AIGLX says enabled (I did not saw it personaly.).

AIGLX can not work without DRI.

> Even there is no big interest in Fedora Project AIGLX working with 
> proprietary fglrx and nvidia drivers, it would be nice to make sure the 
> statement that is on aiglx page
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aiglx?highlight=%28aiglx%29#head-df1959e565dbcf41eba56dc070062e7af60e8a63 
> 
> is still true or not.
> 
> Also, browsing the internet discussion and e.g. ubuntu/gentoo pages, I 
> found lot of issues that may arise with AIGXL - e.g. slow firefox 
> scrolling etc. Definitely, the Xorg with AIGLX causes some people to not 
> be able to set some resolution. There are none of those mentioned on 
> fedoraproject AIGLX pages.

AIGLX itself does not cause slow down in itself.  If you're using a 
compositing manager such as compiz or the discontinued metacity compositor, 
you may experience slow downs for full-window updates such as scrolling or 
animation.  This is a current bottleneck in the open source graphics stack. 
AIGLX does not cause any slow down for legacy (that is, non-composited) 
desktop environments.

AIGLX has no effect whatsoever on the resolutions you can configure with your 
card.

> As those pages are main source people get when asking goolge etc. about 
> aiglx, it would be nice if anybody WHO KNOWS (I am not the one) what the 
> status really is, updates those pages.

Yes, that is a valid point.

> Similar applies for FC6t.. there is too big mist around this feature 
> that is so interesting for desktop users. And I think it's pity.

For FC6, AIGLX is installed and enabled by default, and so is Composite.  As 
you can see in rawhide, we will be shipping a compiz package, and we aim to 
make the compiz / metacity switch as simple as clicking a button.

Thanks for testing,
Kristian