one of the current quirks i have with my latitude d620 and ubuntu is when i either dock or undock i have to restart X11 in order to fix the second display (or remove it). yeah, kinda annoying… i should definantly take a closer look at xrandr to dynamically add or remove displays. [ here ]

update: apparently you have to use twinview vs xinerama…. booo.

$ compiz –replace &
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 01:00.0 0300: 10de:01d7 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (3040×1024) to maximum 3D texture size (4096): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting emerald
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

sweet! i broke my setup. i’ll never figure out why i have such issues with laptops & docking stations. good thing i have backup xorg.confs, guess i’ll have to go back and make sure i have the right settings. i have a feeling that Xgl isn’t gonna be the only thing missing from my xorg.conf.

here’s some ubuntu/compiz/xorg.conf links
[help.ubuntu.com][ubuntuguide][technowizah][blog.anantshri][compiz/ubuntu]

i really haven’t had much luck with compiz and this nvidia card. sometimes it wants to work and sometimes it doesn’t. it looks like the ubuntu developers are working on making compiz from ubuntu 7.10 forwards compatible with ubuntu 8.04. right now everything seems to be working minus the gnome disk mounter applet. some applets are able to be loaded into the panel, some just don’t draw, and others spit out: “The panel encountered a problem while loading “OAFIID:XXXXApplet”.”

back to reading i guess. i did have to add some option to my xorg.conf, they weren’t added by the restricted modules applet when i upgraded from 7.04 to 7.10.

flipp@borked:/etc/X11$ diff xorg.conf xorg.conf.121307
99,101d98
< Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”
< Option “RenderAccel” “true”
< Option “NoLogo” “True”
105,108d101
< Section “Extensions”
< Option “Composite” “Enable”
< EndSection
<
146d138
< Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”

i still need test a few apps to see if they are drawn correctly, but so far so good.

update: here’s some links if you need some help setting up compiz
- compiz.org : ubuntu installation guide
- debian how-to : AIGLX + compiz [good how-to]
- some applications won’t start or are displayed incorrectly
- ubuntu guide (gutsy) advanced desktop effects
- compiz up and running in debian

also, the gnome disk manager works in the panel now. strange. there’s definatly something wierd going on with setup when i turn on the gl desktop.

checking /var/log/Xorg.0.log it looks like i’m currently running this driver, NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 1.0-9639 Mon Apr 16. you can also use glxinfo | grep -i “opengl version” to figure out what driver you’re using. (OpenGL version string: 2.1.0 NVIDIA 96.39)

the compiz nvidia how-to says that version should be fine, but looking at the latest nvidia drivers [here] it looks like the 96.x series is for older gpus and there’s a 100.x series for newer cards. i found my card [Quadro NVS 110M] in the 100.14.19 readme, so i guess i’ll try removing my current driver and installing the new one.