Re: [gentoo-user] Anyone using xfce4 with compositing turned off?

[<wabenbau@gmail.com>]

walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm seeing horrible performance from the xfce window manager (xfwm4)
> on my main, everyday machine, but not on an older backup machine or
> on any of the linux virtual machines I run on virtualbox.
> 
> The symptoms:  moving a window with the mouse is so slow as to be
> painful, and the CPU usage (on one of four CPUs) jumps to 100% almost
> immediately (xfwm4 is the culprit, see below).

I'm using XFCE as DE and xfwm4 as WM. Since I bought a new GPU (Radeon
R7 250), I don't use compositing any more because it causes tearing
when I watch videos in fullscreen with 3840x2160. With this GPU I also 
had some random freezes when compositing was enabled. 

Beside this, performance is very good, regardless compositing is enabled
or disabled. Scrolling text or moving windows around is a bit faster and 
smoother with compositing enabled, especially when other windows are in 
the foreground.

With my old GPU (Radeon HD4550) I always had compositing enabled. 
Everything was smoother and I saw absolutely no glitches, but performance
was also good with compositing disabled, just not quite as smooth as with
compositing enabled.
 
> If I open an xterm and run (for example) "/usr/bin/marco --replace",
> this sluggish behavior returns to normal immediately.
> 
> After wasting hours on google I finally noticed that I had compiled
> x11-wm/xfwm4 with the xcomposite useflag disabled, so I enabled it and
> re-emerged xfwm4.
> 
> Now I can get decent performance from xfwm4, but only if first I turn
> on compositing by running xfwm4-tweaks-settings.  (No, not by running
> the puny and feeble xfwm4-settings app:  I need to invoke a "tweak"
> to make xfce4 an acceptable Desktop Environment on my main desktop
> machine.

As long as I use XFCE (many years) xfwm4-tweaks-settings is the program
to toggle compositing. It's just a name, what is the problem? :-)
Or do you mean, that you must enable compositing every time you start
XFCE? 

> <official rant mode>
> I remember going through this same frustration with gnome3, which was
> (and is) unusable without installing the gnome-tweak-tool package and
> using it to customize settings that I still don't understand.
> 
> (That's why I finally gave up on gnome3, and I may yet give up on
> xfce4 and go back to mate.)
> 
> Note that I'm not turning off <official rant mode> yet, but I should
> mention that this machine is ~amd64 with ati-drivers-15.7 and vanilla
> kernel 3.14.51.  (Same problem with gentoo-sources-3.18.19, BTW.)

I'm using stable xf86-video-ati and stable hardened-sources. I never used 
ati-drivers because I don't like to have proprietary software on my 
gentoo box. For me xf86-video-ati works well and has a sufficient 2D and 
3D performance. 

--
Regards
wabe