Hi everybody.

I'm using Debian Sid with kde4.2.2 and i can't turn kde4 effects on with opengl, it gives me an error that i can't use opengl for effects, just xrender, but xrender puts everything very slow.

Now, i do have opengl...

glxinfo says
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
(and lots more of information)

glxgears also gives me good fps values

thus, other programs work fine with opengl, like foobillard, googleearth, etc... even GL screensavers work fine.

i'm using the nvidia proprietary driver directly from nvidia site

So, my opengl capabilities work fine but kde4 can't use it, why?

Help anyhone?

Best regards
Monteiro

I believe there is an option that allows you to override hardware detection in advanced.

bcooksley wrote:I believe there is an option that allows you to override hardware detection in advanced.

Allready tryed that... doesn't work

thanks

There is some environmental variable that forces the detection to be overridden. Unfortunately I can't remember what it is. Zarin?

Well, i've change the nvidia driver from version 96.43.11 to 173.14.18 and now it is accepting opengl effects... didn't change anything else. My GPU doesn't accept the newer drivers so i must stick with these legacy versions.
I've allways had problems with drivers version 173xx when using more than just one X session, first session works fine, the second doesn't, so i don't know yet if i will be able to start using this driver version for good

I need to do some testing here... thanks

Official nVidia drivers prior to 173.14.12 do not support the compositing OpenGL extension in a stable manner and therefore OpenGL compositing is forcefully disabled by KWin as it would cause an entire system crash/freeze or possibly not even work at all.

Zarin wrote:Official nVidia drivers prior to 173.14.12 do not support the compositing OpenGL extension in a stable manner and therefore OpenGL compositing is forcefully disabled by KWin as it would cause an entire system crash/freeze or possibly not even work at all.

Basicly, this is telling me to buy a newer graphics card.
Currently i have a nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

Question: couldn't this explanation be on the error message outputed by kwin?


Thanks everyone.

i had a similar issue, i directly edit the config file and rebooted, then it worked.

Try setting Backend=OpenGL in
.kde4/share/config/kwinrc

Daniel_Boff wrote:i had a similar issue, i directly edit the config file and rebooted, then it worked.

Try setting Backend=OpenGL in
.kde4/share/config/kwinrc

It's allready like that:

[Compositing]
AnimationSpeed=3
Backend=OpenGL
DisableChecks=true
Enabled=true
GLDirect=true
GLMode=TFP
GLTextureFilter=1
GLVSync=true
HiddenPreviews=5
XRenderSmoothScale=false

but i do have to desable it:
with opengl effects on i have:
--in konqueror, the hint ballons (when we stop the mouse over a file) are cut by half.
--sometimes new windows created are just a black rectangle.

however, the effects are all running fast

this is funny, the first time i had tryied kde4 was on a P4 laptop with just 256kb of RAM and a poor ATI GPU, and effects wore fine...
now i'm trying on a AMD K7 with 1Gb RAM and a Nvidia 5200 and i can't see it work without issues.

A_Monteiro wrote: P4 laptop with just 256kb of RAM

256Mb of RAM of course

To end this matter, i've replaced my Geforce FX 5200 with a Geforce 6600, installed the latest Nvidia driver (180.51) and now i can have all opengl effects without any issues.

To end this matter, i've replaced my Geforce FX 5200 with a Geforce 6600, installed the latest Nvidia driver (180.51) and now i can have all opengl effects without any issues.