Compiz-Fusion for Puppy 4.0

[dinky]

@tombh:
Has anyone tried Compiz-fusion with puppy 4.1? Is it working?

@tex:
Hi Tex, the xine plugin for opera is a pain. I'm pretty sure I included it in the last relase of TigerPup (1,6), and I think i just pulled it from NOP 4. Perhaps grab the plugin from NOP? It will be somewhere like /usr/lib/mozilla.

I've gotten the shits with Opera. It was great with 9.27 and 9.28, but as soon as they jumped to the 9.5 series they lost alot of functionality. I found the browser slower, and the support for web pages was much worse than it had been. 9.27 was very usable, but I rarely use it now we're at the 9.5 series.

Fortunately, Firefox 3 has been awesome to use, and has brought me back to it again. Swiftfox and swiftweasel are useful derivatives that are optimized for specific processors. The features available for Firefox 3 leave Opera for dead, particularly in it's current state. Anyway, good luck with it, if you are still keen to get it going re the xine plugin.
~dinky

[tombh]

I haven't heard of anyone getting CF going in 4.1, but I reckon it's possible. The video drivers would be the only issue I reckon, but there are already nVidia drivers available and I'm sure Barry has recompiled Xorg for 4.1.

Hey, I've had terrible luck with Firefox 3, always crashing and terrible font rendering, which package did you use?

[dinky]

Found no problems with Firefox 3. Default font could be better, other than that no complaints. I've never used a package for firefox 3, always get the tar file from their website. Really easy to use, just run the executable from the extracted tar. I usually etract it to /usr/lib/mozilla, and symlink /usr/lib/mozilla/firefox/firefox to the desktop. Works beautifully. What have you tried?
~dinky

[dinky]

Compiz fusion for puppy 4.1 working beautifully... have it running on the eeepc 701 using your scripts... will post more later.


~dinky

[tombh]

Yeah I do that as well, just download the tar.gz straight from Firefox's website, it works okay, but Flash seems unsettled in it. I had kirk's Puppy-compiled version going before and the font rendering is excellent in that, but it just crashed too much and just seemed to be too CPU hungry. I'm hoping to get a new laptop soon, so maybe I'll revisit FF3 then.

Fantastic! Well CF is certainly alive and kicking in Puppy, there's no stopping it! That's great to hear

[37fleetwood]

ok I'm getting close! I installed the proper video driver and restarted x and compiz works! well mostly anyway the problem I have is one you aparently know about but you didn't spell the fix out clearly enough for me. you know when you said:

If Emerald (the window borders) doesn't load then try
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emerald --replace

well I had no borders so I opened a terminal window and pasted in your code, hit enter and voila! window borders! so I closed the terminal window and immediately the window borders went poof!, gone! so I followed this instruction:

and can be made to load at startup by adding something like:

Code:

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LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz --replace --indirect-rendering --sm-disable ccp &
sleep 3

near the begininng of /root/.xinitrc

and restarted x. still no window borders so I got the clever idea of adding the first bit of code onto the last bit and when I restarted x the screen came back blank. so now tell me what am I doing wrong? as long as I leave the terminal window up I have compiz in perfect working order. how do I get it to stay without having to do the terminal thing all the time?
Scott

[gulk]

as long as I leave the terminal window up I have compiz in perfect working order. how do I get it to stay without having to do the terminal thing all the time?
Scott

@37fleetwood
I got the same problem as you had (nvidia card for me, CF install went smooth, but no borders...).
What I did in order not to have to type in a terminal

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emerald --replace

every time I started X and leaving the terminal window opened, I added the

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emerald --replace

as a program executed at launch time. I am sure there is a also a place somewhere in x.init where you could add the line

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emerald --replace &

but I didn't try that yet.
It also happens from time to time that I get a "segmentation fault" when launching emerald.

@tombh
You did a wonderful job porting CF on puppy. This can only make puppy more attractive and popular. Thanks for the work you put into that!

[37fleetwood]

@cb88: I've never tried that myself, but thanks for mentioning it.

@aoiyamoto: Great news! Thanks for persevering, it will inspire others I'm sure. The dbus error is just a warning and nothing to worry about, if you autostart CF at boot time then you won't see any errors. As far as I know the only other window-decorators, as they're called, that you can have with CF are the gtk-window-decorator and the kde-window-decorator, neither of which are included with my CF dotpet -- they need to be configured in at compile time. However, forum member wow has a CF dotpet for Puppy 4 that does have the gtk-window-decorator with it.

@tex: This is great news too! What graphics card do you have?

I'm going tohave to look into these missing python deps as I've not come across the problem before -- though I suspect it is to do with the fact that my How To links to the Puppy 3 version of Python. Ah! stevenbinion has compile python and essential modules for Puppy 4. You will need the python-cairo, python-gtk and python-gobject modules too remember. I think they'll already be included if you decide to use stevenbinion's SFS. I'm not sure whether installing this newer version will overwrite the older version. Please let me know how this goes, so I can update the How To, if there is success.

ok going back in the thread a bit. I'm having the same issues Tex hadbut I'm not as linux abled as he is so I installed these python packages:
python-cairo, python-gtk and python-gobject
when that didn't do it I installed Python-2.5.2-i686.pet which is a slight upgrade as I was at 2.5
when that didn't work I installed the rest of stevenbinion's packages in the list one at a time checking to see if eventually I might hit upon the one I was missing. still no CCSM. where did I go wrong?
also I added emerald --replace to the programs that start with puppy which worked fine.
Scott
P.S. Tombh, maybe you could edit the first post with some of these extra steps all cleaned up and in order so dummies like me can connect the dots easier. also I just want to say your patience is legendary and your talent is beyond doubt
thanx!

[tex]

Hey tombh, I did try your patched version of mplayer. Runs like a charm. Still having problems with opera, though. I think I am going to try unleashed with puppy 4.1, compiz, and firefox. Opera just isn't it. (Although it works great in windows.) I sure appreciate all the tips on how to set up compiz and the time you have spent sharing your knowlege.

Thanks dinky, for the comments. I do agree. I think I will follow your lead!

37fleetwood, hang in there! Y'know it is all trial and error! After many trials...you get fewer errors...

Thanks for responding to my posts!

[tombh]

@37fleetwood: So gulk's advice worked I did post the solution to the CCSM problem -- therefore use wow's CF package instead (just install it over the old one), the link is in the how to as well.

@gulk: Thanks for the compliments, glad your enjoying the delights of Puppy and CF -- a great combination

@tex: Thanks, your gratitude is genuinely much appreciated Yeah, I'm not so keen on Opera myself, which is a shame cos it is a great browser, I'm a web designer, so it has to be Firefox. I also run IE6 and IE7 in wine (purely for bug fixing websites of course)!!

[dinky]

Hi folks! Firstly, emerald is fairly easy once you get the hang of the startup. There are 2 options I found to work. One's already been mentioned, simply adding

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emerald  --replace &

towards the bottom of /root/.xinitrc (after the command to start compiz)

The second is in CCSM. Go to "window decoration", and find the space which says "command". Simply enter

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emerald  --replace

there. This is what I do, and it works fine. Also worth noting is the latest version of Cairo-dock, which you can find on these forums. There's a great feature in an applet you can add to control compiz-fusion from the dockbar... basically if it crashes it's restarted again.

@tombh
I've been thinking more about your 'Project Ripple' idea. I think it's a good one. I've been experimenting around with gdesklets, wow's latest compiz-fusion, and the latest release of cairo-dock. I think they are all winners. I'm still using puppy 3.01 for my main workspace on my eeepc laptop, simply because I haven't rebuilt a stable version of puppy 4.1 yet. I've been playing around with remasters around an xfce desktop, and keep running into bugs. Anyway, just downloading now the latest puppy 4 packages to rebuild from unleashed, to see if removing a few packages makes things easier. Couple of questions.

I'm wanting to have a play around with your ripple idea, and am not sure the best way to go about it. My initial thoughts were to make a build without any window manager, only including rox or thunar. Will compositing work if I do this, and don't use the xfce desktop? I've gotten compiz-fusion and gdesklets working happily without any other manager by running

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xwin rxvt

to start X, then using the desktop background in Compiz-Fusion for a backdrop. Very impressive and seemed fast. Will try later with Cairo-dock.

Is there a way i can start this without using rxvt? I'm not sure why that works in the first place. Can we launch compiz-fusion as the window manager in any other way? Or, is it possible to hide rxvt in the background when we start it as X?

Cairo-dock seems advanced enough now to more or less replace the xfce panel. The only features I will miss are thunar and the desktop... I really like having things like hotpup on the desktop, and being able to drag and save files to it. Still, using gdesklets like the mac dashboard, together with cairo-dock, looks very promising.

Have you started a thread yet for Ripple and would you like to? I'm thinking of merging eeetiger (customized nicely for the eeepc) into it, and making TigerPup another project specific for usb sticks, happily supporting hardware not able to utilise compiz-fusion. The crunch point for me, as always, is time. My wife's been sick, two year old a happy bundle of chaos, and my 3 week old needing lots of attention... lol. This is the first chance I've had to look at puppy today, and I'll cop it shortly if I don't hit the sack. Anyway, will let you know how I go matey. Cheers.
~dinky

[wow]

Is there a way i can start this without using rxvt? I'm not sure why that works in the first place. Can we launch compiz-fusion as the window manager in any other way?

Make an script to run compiz fusion (compiz --indirect-rendering --sm-disable ccp, without the "&") and use it to start X (xwin <script>), the problem is that you can't restart/reload Compiz without closing X. The trick is to launch a daemon or another program at the end of your script(autocutsel, glipper ??).

Or use a session manager to launch everything.

[dinky]

Great! Thanks wow, will give it a try later on tonight. The script part is easy, and I get you about not being able to restart/reload compiz without closing X. Not sure I get the daemon/other program bit though. So basically you mean that whatever X launches with (rxvt, compiz-fusion, etc) has to stay open in order for X to stay active... So with my idea above, I'd look at launching either gdesklets or Cairo Dock as part of my script... perhaps both, as they need to start when X does at anyrate. So that way if Cairo dock is managing Compiz-fusion, it will still stay active if Compiz crashes. If I put Cairo dock and gdesklets at the end of the script to launch X, does that also mean that only one of these needs to be open for X to stay active? Cairo dock seems a touch too unstable to rely on that keeping X open on it's own... I've had more than my share of crashes. I think AWN would be more stable... but there seems to be more functionality in Cairo dock, and I've already got the latest version working.... anyway, will let you know how I go. Can you think of any ways to add desktop functionality to this, similar to gnome or xfce? Compiz's wallpaper plugin is great, but it would be nice to add a desktop under it. JWM is tiny, but am I right in saying there's no way to add support for compositing within this? Cheers.
~dinky

[tombh]

@dinky: Oh I'm genuinely giddy with excitement about this! It's been a dream of mine for so long, but I just haven't had the time to do any serious work on it. So I'm all behind you trying this out.

Yeah, wow is right about making a script that's definitely the way forward. Although I'm not so sure that restarting CF means restating X too. I seem to rememebr in my experiments with an "xwin rxvt" I could quite happily restart CF. Maybe what wow is on about is the fact that the script (in "xwin <script>") will only contain that one command and that killing that process will kill the script and thus X. So by having more processes running from within that script will 'prop' up that script if one of the other processes dies? I'm just guessing! I'm sure wow has a better idea than me. But if it's just any old daemon we need(eg glipper's jjust a clipboard manager) then Cairo-Dock will do just fine, it's a daemon after all anyway.

So to get a desktop in terms of icons, just use ROX. The command is

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rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin

Unfortunately we encounter another obstacle here, thereofre ROX's lack of support for transparent backgrounds, because without that we can't use CF's wallpaper plugin to display individual backgrounds for each face of the cube

Oh yeah, why not use Screenlets instead of gDesklets? You need pyhton anyway to run CCSM, so why not just use Screenlets, they're wobblier and funkier

Oh and yet another niggle I haven't managed to overcome is the system tray issue. Have you tried Cairo-Dock's system tray? It does work, but it just seems plain weird to me!

Yeah, time is an issue here for me too. I seem to be quite involved in Puppy community discussions at the moment, which has to take priority really and I have a living to make as well!

But I'll help in every way I can

[dinky]

Lets do it. Project Ripple begins. I've no idea of how much time I can put into it, or what I'm actually beginning, but the only way to find out is to start. I'm less involved in the puppy community, and perhaps that's a good thinkg. For me the baby laptop I have is a highly useful toy I use for my business, and and enjoy playing with. It's not more than that however, and I need to focus on my family and my business. So we'll see. In any event, I managed to totally hose up my Ubuntu distribution earlier tonight, and am just reinstalling the whole bloody thing now... So will play around with a few scripts. Shall we start a seperate thread for Ripple, or keep it going here? Cheers,
~dinky

edit: Ubuntu finally installed again. Time for bed! Had a play with the beginnings of Ripple. It doesn't seem like that complicated an idea, not initially anyway. Alot of work needs to be done, but there are some pretty good basic tools already in place. Anyway, created a script to launch compiz, cairo-dock, and gdesklets all at once. More or less anyway. Found that gdesklets needed to start several seconds later, or they crash. I've set them on the compiz widget layer, so they are in the background when X comes up. They take 10 to 15 seconds to load properly though... so I'm unsure about this. That also could be I have a slow laptop, my eeepc only has a 900 mhz processor. I think it would work fine if I only had one applet, say the clock, loaded by default. I'm not as partial to screenlets Tom, the project seems much less supported and last look it was a bugger to install things... gdesklets is so much easier. Literally drag and drop to install packages, and each desklet can be moved with ease. It's also easy to edit the source code, if you wish. Currently I'm using MU's edited package, which doesn't require gnome libraries. If we use gdesklets as a base in Ripple, we might want to add them back in.

I like the latest cairo dock, now that it's more stable. The system tray seems allright, I really lik ehow it can be detatched and placed anywhere on the screen. Great feature, and a cool way to replace the panels. Not everything is stable though, and configuring it can be a pain. Couldn't work out how to create sub-docks... does the code have to be hacked into? The gui didn't work for me.
I also really like Avant Window Navigator, and wonder if it could be included as well. Not as many features, but much easier to configure and very stable. It would look good at the bottom of the screen, with Cairo Dock on the top. Does anyone know of a package of AWN that works with Puppy 4.1? Can anyone compile them for me? Wow, were you using them awhile ago? I haven't tried compiling them yet, and would rather not if an easier alternative exists.

Had no luck with your rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-filer/PuppyPin script Tom, nothing happened. The only way I could get colour to the desktop was with the wallpaper plugin in compiz. Very impressive. It would be nice to have hotpup workable on the desktop, but no idea how to do it. Also the JWM (or is it ROX?) desktop doesn't support anything other than icons... no files placed there, no folders, etc. Would be good to have that support. Any ideas how we could add that in? For now perhaps everything lives in the dockbars, and gdesklets/screenlets dashboard.

I guess the next step is trying a rebuild from unleashed, and seeing if I can leave out a windows manager other than Compiz-fusion altogether. Any other ideas I should try and add in there? Cheers,
~dinky

[wow]

The other way so start compiz...
I'm using lxsession to launch Compiz Fusion, AWN, Cairo Dock, nautilus and gnome settings manager. If you want to learn how to make another "frankenstein" desktop environment read this http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXSession, download the source code from http://lxde.org/, and apply this .

Does anyone know of a package of AWN that works with Puppy 4.1? Can anyone compile them for me? Wow, were you using them awhile ago? I haven't tried compiling them yet, and would rather not if an easier alternative exists.

AWN requires too many gnome dependencies, if you want to compile it from source try to install Puppy 4, gnome.sfs and devx_410.sfs (don't forget to remove all those .wh.* files before compile anything).

I made a pet package for puppy3, download it from [url=http://hosted.filefront.com/rockinfreak/2162122][here], [dependencies here], but beware there are NO instructions

[dinky]

Thanks for that. How do I remove the .wh.* files? Ta.

[tombh]

Okay, started a Project Ripple thread.

Just because there's a thread doesn't mean we have to rush into it! Step by step eh. I've got a new job now, so won't be able to take sly adventures into Puppy land during the day anymore

BTW I've just got me a new laptop, very swish it is too. Got CF going with Puppy 4.1, thanks to gray's nVidia drivers and JB4x4 XFCE pet. Hurray!

[dinky]

Well, there's precious little time at my end. Have managed to snatch a few minutes this morning, and last night, to play around, but that's finishing shortly. Friend's on their way, and I've promised my wife to have the vacuming done before their back from a milk run...lol. Ah, the life of domesticality. It's nice to be boring once in awhile...lol.

Anyway, glad you've started that thread, will respond to it soon. Been playing around with a few rebuilds of unleashed, and will get back to you shortly. Cheers!
~dinky

[wow]

@dinky: Use this command to remove whiteout files (.wh.*) and reboot:

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find /initrd/pup_r* -name .wh.* -delete -print && wmreboot

More info about UnionFS and whitout files: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7714