Activate hidden COMPIZ effects...OUT-OF-THE-BOX!!

Boys and girls, this little light-weight linux distro the acer and linpus guys have packed up for our Aspire ONE has a lot of interesting potential and features hidden inside.
I really doubt that no one with a little linux experience with the aONE and the "advanced mode hack" hasn't realized that compiz comes installed by default, only that the acer guys didn't leave us an option to activate it, but if it's there i really think it is because in a future update they will activate it or maybe it is for the future aONE with 1gig of ram...dunno, but they wouldnt install something they're not planning to give some use, as this OS lacks lot of software, just has essential stuff that's going to be used.
Ok, so enough talking, nobody tried activating it then? Well, go boys, as root go to a terminal and type compiz-manager and vualá! you got compiz working...the cube (you can see the fedora logo on top!), expose windows, transparency, wobbling windows, 4 different desktops, etc...all is configured by the CompizConfig Settings Manager in the advanced menu. Beat that MacOSX :-D !!
Strange behaviours encountered:
-you can loose the acer-search-desktop, but only happened to me once, you can reboot (will have to run compiz again though) and it will reappear or you can just click on run program and execute it again, though happened to me that with compiz running it popped up in a different location on desktop.
-when you activate compiz the default "windows-xp like" window manager changes to a reddish style, also can happen that the window square surrounding windows just disappears, but normally doesn't happen. everything comes back as normal when you restart or you can just kill (end task) applications with the task manager that opens like in windows with ctrl+alt+del(supr)...though this way it may leave the desktop corrupted or maybe not responding properly...i prefer restarting, its only 15 seconds
-well, for all of you that don't know, compiz is an opengl based window manager so it needs proper opengl graphics accelerating drivers working. if compiz works drivers have to be installed i thought (people in the forum were thinking maybe not because of poor graphics behaviour in games or videos). This little OS toy (more than that ;-) as we can see) has Tungsten Graphics OpenGL drivers installed for Intel GMA950 (verified twice as its seen in the opengl config window of google earth i installed...yep, and working, though eating more than 100mb ram...need more ram :-S )....with this info being sayed i want to remind people that the last time i tried on another laptop these drivers (tungsten makes opensource opengl drivers for intel) with compiz working i had to desactivate compiz before playing videos as it wouldnt manage both things at a time...you would see black videos with sound (intels opensource drivers are not as good as closedsource nvidia or ati drivers...oh well). But i managed to play 3d quake-type fps games...so if with this machine we cant do intensive 3d things i think its due to the shitty bios settings that only lets us share 8mb of ram for the video card, thats shit, so you can have a computer with very good processor or lots of ram but if your video card has 8mb you're going nowhere...lets see what people can tweak.

Hope all of this helped, i am really lazy to upload some screenshots, i am never on forums so actually i dont know how to...i know how to make the screenshots though, so if i can help ill do it. I really think that with a small screen having compiz its like a veeery big improvement productivity-wise and once you use it you can't live without it. For all of you out there wanting to learn and use this machine further and deeper more than what acer wanted us to, i really recommend 1gig more of ram as you guys will use 3d, more heavy apps, compiz, etc...and keeping this OS as its very well optimized (much better than eee's xandros (till better optimized aONE distros come available in future)...lets all tweak together!

Peace and sorry for my english as i'm from Spain.

Guillermo. :mrgreen:

 

like the way it moves.... thanks

matt

 

i found compiz the other day.. but while the effects are really nice and fluid, scrolling in firefox becomes a major pain. until thats fixed i dont think im going to use it much

 

Firefox with compiz on or off works exactly the same way, and scrolling is not its major fault...i don't understand you. Anyway, i use opera web browser 9.5, works faster for me and its better. Good luck!

 

I noticed the same problem (firefox slow scrolling) when using effects in ubuntu 8.04 on an intel G35 chipset (integrated graphics), and a [email protected] so I also gave up any 3d effects.

It's easy to test it:
1- open any page in firefox (even simple text) with more than one screen of height (preferably several screens to test scroll)
2 - pick the right scroll bar with teh mouse and see how smooth (frames per second) the page content can shift.

When using 3d effects, scrolling gets jerk (jumpy)

I think 3d hardware accelerated page zoom would be a rather nice addition to firefox (and I suppose that's what the iPhone is doing to show web pages on its low resolutions screen)

PS: I know firefox 3 can already zoom the whole page, but it takes a while on slower CPU's (because it's not hardware accelerated)...

 

You guys are right, tried it with either opera and firefox and pages are jerky scrolling with compiz on, i have to say i didn't notice till you told me. That's up to everyone's preferences, i prefer having a bit of jerky performance scrolling on windows and having the expose functionality as in macosx...its a very good improvement managing windows fast with a small screen like this. This problem i think is due to the inmature intel linux drivers, nothing compared to nvidia, this problem doesnt exist with nvidia drivers. Per example, use google earth and compiz at the time and the 3d earth jumps a bit with intel graphics.
Good luck boys!

 

Ouah! I've just tried compiz and the cube effect is indeed very nice! Thanks for the tip!
Is there a way to have compiz activated all the time (even after a restart?) :?:
I also noticed that compiz can manage widgets, I'd love a weather widget, anyone could help? :?: