Mukund’s adventures

I installed Fedora Core 6 yesterday, after wanting a more mordern set of libraries (than FC5). FC6 has gtk+ 2.10.x and now that Red Hat is going to ship even RHEL5 with gtk+ 2.10.x, I’m considering making use of GtkStatusIcon mandatory and yanking older gtk+ support for Gum. Extras also has the newer (than FC5 Extras) gtkmm libs I want to try.

I’m extremely pleased with the use of the compiz extension and the various performance enhancements thanks to all the free software projects’ work. There are ext3 and DSO performance enhancements for example, and then this is GNOME 2.16 now. It feels like I have a newer computer. Opening files in EOG, Evince, etc. were really snappy. Dunno who are to blame for this . It may be that my machine was too new for an older distro and the hardware is only now fully supported. The desktop is snappy. Apps are snappy. And finally I got the AIGLX eye candy (Desktop Effects) working for the first time. Of course, it wasn’t without its set of problems, one of which was the dreaded “nobody cared about IRQ ###“. This is also the first time I’m using a 64-bit distro.. Enigmail didn’t work on x86_64 Thunderbird (this isn’t Fedora’s fault), and there were some other 64-bit woes to deal with (again not Fedora’s fault).

HOWTO: Someone in #fedora said I should write about this. In case anyone wants to enable Desktop Effects on Fedora Core 6 with an NVIDIA binary driver, here’s how you do it. It doesn’t work out of the box and a little simple setup is needed. Note that if this fries your computer, steals your puppies, or does other bad things, I am not responsible.

1. Install FC6 (including the kernel-devel package; note that certain i386 users may have a mis-matched kernel-devel package installed and can fix/workaround it easily). Install development tools such as GCC too.
2. Install the latest stable binary driver from NVIDIA’s website. When the driver finishes installation, it will ask you if it should update the X configuration. Answer yes.
3. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and do the following:
   1. Add a section called “Extensions” at the end of xorg.conf:

      Section "Extensions"
          Option "Composite" "Enable"
      EndSection

   2. Add the line with extmod below to the “Module” section:

      Section "Module"
          Load           "glx"
          Load           "extmod"
      EndSection

   3. Add the line with the “AddARGBGLXVisuals” option below to the “Screen” section:

      Section "Screen"
          Identifier     "Screen0"
          Device         "Videocard0"
          Monitor        "Monitor0"
          ....
      
          Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
      #    Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
      
          SubSection     "Display"
          ....
          EndSubSection
      EndSection

4. Restart X.
5. Pray to some gods. If you don’t believe in gods, then break a coconut in front of your computer instead.
6. Log in and enable Desktop Effects in System→Preferences→Desktop Effects. Hopefully everything should work. If things don’t work, you may want to try the “DisableGLXRootClipping” option above too.
7. For further configuration of effects, you can try looking up compiz’s settings in gconf-editor.