KDE memory usage
NVidia drivers updated
NVidia has finally released a 8xxx version of its driver for Linux.
The 7xxx had a serious problem with accelerated render, and was causing random freeze with Xfce WM embedded compositor. The 8xxx version seems to be a lot better in this regard.
So if you use xfwm4’s compositor with NVidia, make sure you get the latest driver from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
Patch for Compaq R3000 laptop
Off topic, but since I’ve been working on this mostly for the past few weeks… I’ve prepared a workarround to an incredibly crappy harware bug that cause the timer to run 3 times too fast on some of the Compaq R3000/HP zv5000 laptops.
The page is here : http://www.xfce.org/~olivier/r3000
Xfce, project of the week on “OSDir.com”
Xfce is the Open Source project on the week on OSDir.com.
You can rate Xfce from this link at O’Reilly’s OSDir.com.
Xfce window manager now includes its own compositing manager
It tooks me a while and a lot of work to get the compositing manager working in xfwm4, the Xfce window manager (obligatory screenshot)
I’ve been asked why making a separate compositor rather than using X.org’s xcompmgr.
To make it short, because it makes perfectly sense. The compositor is like a WM on its own, it manages a stack of all windows, monitor all kinds on X event and reacts accordingly.
Having the compositing manager embedded in the window manager also helps keeping the various visual effects in sync with window events.
An RPM archive for fedora with compositor enabled is available here (source RPM here)
This package is to be used in place of the regular xfwm4 package from Xfce 4.2 RC2 available here
Menu shadow effect for gtk+-2.4.3
Hey, I took some time to prepare RPM packages and pre-patched source archives of gtk+-2.4.3 with the menu shadow patch applied (the patch remains the same and applies fine on gtk+-2.4.3)
Updates from the usual xfce page or from Sourceforge.
xfwm4 native multihead support
Hey, xfwm4 now supports native multi screen and is able to manage all the screens connected to a display from a single xfwm4 process.
Adding this caused deep and complex changes in the core of xfwm4, so that might be still a bit rough on the edges…
If someone with the HW could just test… What’s needed is a multiscreen configuration but without running Xinerama (ie, a setup with :0.0 and :0.1 as screens, for example)
Cheers,
Olivier.
xfwm4 theme how-to
An xfwm4 theme how-to is available here:
http://www.xfce.org/xfwm4-theme-howto/
Enjoy!
Olivier.
Libxfcegui4 Xinerama support dropped
Since gtk+ now provides all required tools for dealing with Xinerama, I’ve removed my own implementation from libxfcegui4.
Both the taskbar and the panel have been changed to use GdkScreen.
Partial struts support in taskbar
The taskbar now sets partial struts. That makes the configurable width a lot more useful.
Another neat effect is with Xinerama. The taskbar should not waste space on all screens anymore.