Let me point out up front with some bitterness that as yet, this has not worked for me under Fedora Core 6, and I put a lot of time and energy into trying to make it go. For now, I have more important things to do than fight with this, but maybe I will get back to it someday.

Apparently this was available, but not advertised much in Fedora Core 5, but it seems to be mainstream in Core 6. AIGLX is "Accelerated Indirect GLX". What it boils down to at this stage is that some video hardware now supports cool and snazzy effects. In particular MacOS like virtual desktop switching via a rotating cube effect, wiggly windows, and other amusing stuff.

I have an Nvidia dual head card (a GeForce 6800), and as of this writing am running the 9629 nvidia driver and am using the kernel module from the livna archive. The claim is that ALL nvidia cards are supported by drivers 9625 or higher, so I should be good to go. 

rpm -qa | grep nvidia reveals:
    kmod-nvidia-1.0.9629-1.2.6.18_1.2849.fc6
    xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-1.0.9629-1.lvn6
Since I used yum to upgrade from FC5 to FC6, I did not have compiz (since I run gnome, by default I am running metacity). Compiz is the snazzy new window manager with cool effects. I got compiz via: 
yum install compiz
compiz-0.0.13-0.32.20060817git.fc6
Once I install the compiz package, the Desktop Effects menu entry appears in the System-Preferences menu, but fails to achieve launch, (I just get a white screen) so we need to dig deeper.

Typing Xorg -version tells me I have Xorg 7.1.1, which should have AIGLX support. So you can really get confused there are at least 2 X servers to choose from. There is Xorg, which I am running. There is Xgl, which is an X server explicitly designed to work with GLX, but is not what we want for the game with fedora core 6. Xgl is/was contributed by Novell, and you could run it instead of Xorg. Xorg in its latest version supports GL as an option, so you can still run it with metacity with the option turned off. Also mentioned on the Fedora wiki is Xair, which might be Xorg with the recent GL additions, bu who knows.

While we are wandering afield, it is worth mentioning that there is beryl as an alternative to compiz. Apparently this is a split from the compiz project that has more cool stuff than compiz does at the present time.

Here are some links:

The compiz link will take you to the compiz forums which have what look like detailed instructions on how to make this work, but no joy for me yet.

Compiz is the new snazzy window manager using the 3D AIGLX stuff. Do yum install compiz and then look for a menu entry System-Preferences-Desktop Effects and turn it on. So far this has not worked for me.

A deeper look at compiz

rpm -qlp compiz-0.0.13-0.32.20060817git.fc6.i386.rpm shows the following: 
/etc/gconf/schemas/compiz.schemas
/usr/bin/compiz
/usr/bin/desktop-effects
/usr/bin/gnome-window-decorator
/usr/lib/compiz/libcube.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libdbus.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libdecoration.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libfade.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libgconf.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libminimize.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libmove.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libplace.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libplane.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libresize.so
/usr/lib/compiz/librotate.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libscale.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libswitcher.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libwater.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libwobbly.so
/usr/lib/compiz/libzoom.so
/usr/lib/window-manager-settings/libcompiz.so
/usr/share/applications/redhat-desktop-effects.desktop
/usr/share/compiz/background.png
/usr/share/compiz/desktop-effects.glade
/usr/share/compiz/icon.png
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/COPYING.GPL
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/COPYING.MIT
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/ChangeLog
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/INSTALL
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/README
/usr/share/doc/compiz-0.0.13/TODO
/usr/share/gnome/wm-properties/compiz.desktop
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/36x36/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/96x96/apps/desktop-effects.png
/usr/share/locale/cs/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/fi/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/hu/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/it/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/zh_CN/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo
/usr/share/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/compiz.mo

In particular, the file: /usr/share/applications/redhat-desktop-effects.desktop adds the gnome menu entry for "Desktop Effects" and invokes /usr/bin/desktop-effects, which is a compiled binary.

It is worth noting that the contents of the directory /usr/share/applications defines the contents of the gnome menus, but back to this in more detail some other time.

compiz --replace gconf & metacity --replace &

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org