[ltp] What about XGL/Compiz experiencies on a T42

[honey]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, M Daniel R Magarzo wrote:

> I'm just curious about whether someone has tried XGL on a ThinkPad T42
> or similar (T4x), whether it is really possible or maybe it depends on
> the amount of video card RAM memory of each TP..., or maybe just it is
> impossible... Actually I've never read anything about this.
>
> Does someone has tried that successfully?
>
> I'm particularly interested in Fedora Core 5 experiences (if any); my TP
> comes with an ATI RV350 Mobility Radeon 9600 M10 with 64 MB of memory.
>
> I'd like to know -before to try anything- whether my hardware would have
> any possibility or would worth it.

Another report: T40 here, with an ATI Radeon R250 Lf [FireGL 9000].
I'm a core Fedora Core 5 user (if that's not a tautology), but
decided not to mess with it in FC5 - mainly because it's my main OS,
compiz/aiglx are due for FC6, which isn't too long away, and others
with my card advised that I'd get glitches at 1400x1050, my native
resolution, and I didn't want to roll down to lower.

So instead I picked my playtime Ubuntu installation, upgraded it to
Dapper, and followed the following article, which is a nice way to
try out compiz without extensively messing up your system-wide X
settings:

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=916&page=2

(the only system-wide change I had to make was to set the timeout in
gdm.conf to 50 seconds - you'll see it referenced all over - compiz
needs time to wake up).

Result was a very functional desktop on relatively meagre, by today's
standards, configuration.  No glitches at native resolution.  It's a
shot in the arm for Ubuntu for me, but I'm still using Fedora as my
core distro - and will try compiz when FC6 is out rather than try and
elbow it into place in FC5.

Hope this helps at least give you confidence to try.

My verdict on compiz: well it's pretty, but I'm not sure it's quite the
ground-stealing UI change that some people think is going to
revolutionise Linux takeup.  It's *fun*.

Honey