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The Ubuntu community has contributed 10907 ideas, 49662 comments, 1064082 votes

Idea #2876: Make it possible to mark applications "Disable Compiz when running"



bug This idea was marked as being in development the 13 June 08.
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Written by johan the 3 Mar 08 at 21:54. Category: Graphics.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: In development
Description
This is what I want:

I want to be able to mark applications "Not Compiz compatible" so that Compiz shuts down when I launch a game or some other 3D-heavy application. This is something I want to improve stability and performance for such applications.
Tags: (none)


Developer comments
This will be automatically fixed with the arrival of DRI2 and updated drivers. There is no point in adding a plugin or workaround like suggested. The caveat here is that the initial support for DRI2 is only for intel's i915 at the moment... maybe with i965 following shortly thereafter.

When the OpenSource drivers for ATI (radeon,radeonHD) and nVIDIA (nouveau) will support DRI2 is still unknown. But the only way to fix the mentioned bugs is via DRI2. There is not much action that can come from our (Canonical) side as we don't have any experienced upstream Xorg developer in our team.


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Comments
UBfusion wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 22:02
I like your idea.

I think I had such a problem with Google Earth - it would flicker badly until I disabled desktop effects.

tomaszx wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 22:24
very good idea

Vote +1

madjr wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 03:21
it could detect automatically when openGL is being requested and ask the user if he wants to disable desktop effects.

also, your idea of manually adding programs is good too :)

christopher_lees wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 04:02
Great idea! I don't have trouble with games or Google Earth while I'm running Compiz, but curiously enough I do have trouble with Noteedit and Kdenlive. So yes, I'd love this feature.

Of course, the best solution is to update all programs so they are compatible regardless...

avixK7 wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 04:33
I've been thinking about such a solution for a while now. Great idea :D Some games that I play don't respond very well unless I manually disable Compiz first.

A feature like this would be great :)

Yanqui wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 06:02
We have this exact propblem with one of our applications at work. We've been wanting to give everyone compiz, but it doesn't work with Pro/E Wildfire (crappy app, stay away from it if you can). This would be nice.
+1

c.sokun wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 07:55
Oh, how about exclude workspace from Compiz so that once you switch into the workspace Compiz shutdown :)

Madsrh wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 08:44
This would be nice. You should check out Compiz Fusion Tray Icon. Perhaps it can provide a solution for now.

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/08/26/compiz-fusion-tray-icon/

xapient wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 09:22
why make compiz aware of this applications.. is this the right way? i think its better to ask google for better compiz support in their apps. compiz and wms like it are the future..

tomatz wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 11:43
Excellent idea! +1

Kammy wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 12:07
Several Games may Flicker with Compiz Fusion. A nice solution would be that Compiz-Fusion disable by default if a 3d-Application runs Fullscreen.

dendron wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 14:10
This is a bad idea. Auto-disabling compiz may leave user without a window manager at all.
If you have problems with compiz just report them to compiz developers.

Psycho_zs wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 14:57
Compiz affects heavily on framerate. For example: Urban Terror shows ~90 fps on (NV6600GT nvidia-glx drivers) when using metacity. When using compiz UrT's internal counter continues to show ~90 fps, but actual framerate falls below 30-20.
Sauerbraten's counter shows change correctly: 120/40 (metacity/compiz)

Blender cannot be run in windowed mode with compiz.

So yes. It is very good idea!

Psycho_zs wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 14:58
Oh yes, on ATI and some intel videocards it is TOTALLY impossible to use any 3d apps and watch video when using compiz!!!

terlmann wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 15:58
Plus Plus. Please Implement.

Tush wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 17:41
Definitely! Firefox runs slow as hell for me when Compiz is running.

Lorenz wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 17:41
+1

I think that's a good idea!

Vadim P. wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 18:00
Great idea.

For now, to easily solve this, get Compiz Switch - it's a little button you can have in your gnome panel, that when you click, will toggle compiz on/off.

http://forlong.blogage.de/article/pages/Compiz-Switch

pornographer wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 19:36
Yep. Due to me being forgetful about this issue (so not using a toggle button) I have reimplemented several of my launchers as a small shell script that first runs metacity --replace before launching the app.
Natch I still have to re-launch compiz after, so a better native solution would be great.

days_of_ruin wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 20:32
Great idea.I think it should automatically disable compiz if an app is fullscreen.

jfanaian wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 21:40
A suggestion would be for it to be handled similar to Vista's "advanced effects." Whenever you run a 3d-app on full screen (I think, I'm not completely certain as I don't use Vista too often) it will pop-up a notification telling you that the advanced effects have been disabled because you are using a program that conflicts with it, but then when you close that program it will automatically enable it again.

A similar procedure could be followed with compiz if effects are enabled. Bring a notification telling the user that it was closed (be sure that it stays out of the way if it pops up behind a full-screen app though), and replace the decorator with metacity (in case they use a composite decorator such as emerald). Then when the app is closed, enable compiz again.

Great idea :)

johan wrote on the 4 Mar 08 at 23:19
I do use fusion-icon but I would like a more seamless hassle-free solution, so this is why I posted this idea. The idea about having Compiz automatically shutdown (and startup afterwards again of cours) could also be done by detecting openGL being used somewhere else. I did consider this too, and that would be awesome, but I do think that my solution would be a simple quick fix for the issue, and therefore more realistic to be implemented. I guess you could add this sort of setting in the deb-package too.

luisromangz wrote on the 6 Mar 08 at 19:45
I think this should be handled in a Compiz plugin.

ariendj wrote on the 16 Mar 08 at 01:11
Good stuff. I really like compiz and I really don't like having to turn it off to play a 3D game.

coryg wrote on the 20 Mar 08 at 00:16
This would be an incredibly useful feature

Denis wrote on the 3 Apr 08 at 13:14
It would be useful to fix some problems.

However, I think that compiz should be designed to not influence other graphic applications (too much).

Also I would like to be able to task switch, even when working fullscreen. Meaning that either Compiz has to be restarted every time I switch to another application or my desktop graphics will work slow (without compiz).

Generally, I don't think this fix would be future-proof. It would be better to make improvements to Compiz, so other programs don't suffer from the hardware-accelerated desktop.

artir wrote on the 13 Apr 08 at 11:44
I have good news, guys. Compiz people are working on DRI2 support... This means we can play any OpenGL game while using compiz WITHOUT any problem. :)


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