Compiz

Message

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Wed Jan 18, 2023 11:06 pm

Hi all,
I use KDE Plasma on a 6 monitor setup (across two Nvidia cards using 2 separate x screens). This setup has worked very well for years. I do have a hand patched version of plasma-workspace to workaround a plasma bug in the way it handles (or doesn't handle) multiple x screens. I use compiz. It's very handy and improves my productivity. I heavily use features like shrinking a window down to a smaller (but still functional) thumbnail. I also use the group/tab plugin which allows me to group many related windows together (handy when you have 10 rdesktop sessions running).

Right now compiz works. But the ebuilds I have are out of date. They give an "EAPI=6 not supported" warning in emerge. And just recently pycairo won't update because ccsm wants an older version.

I'd like to still use compiz. I can't find an overlay for it.

Questions:
- is wayland running KDE Plasma ready for a production workstation? Is it known to work in 4+ head environments and with multiple xscreens?
- is wayfire (a compiz equvalent?) fully functional (compared to compiz)?
- how do I get compiz building again? Is there an overlay that has it?

Thanks,
Allistar.

CooSee · Post by **CooSee** » Thu Jan 19, 2023 12:01 am

hello,

compiz is very old and all the the overlays are abandoned

KDE itself has some compiz-like options.

Wayfire is ok >>> compiz on wayland.

you can also try this https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland or https://github.com/WillPower3309/swayfx

i hope it'll help.

fpemud · Post by **fpemud** » Thu Jan 19, 2023 2:25 am

I'm using gui-wm/wayfire daily.
wayfire is ok for using, but it doesn't have as many plugins as the original compiz.
And from wayland's perspective, the design and plugin model of wayfire/compiz is somehow an overkill. I think I'll move away from wayfire eventually.

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Sun Jan 22, 2023 9:25 pm

I've looked at the KDE compositor and I could probably get used to it, but it has barely a fraction of the compiz features. A benefit of compiz was emerald which had considerable more window decorations than KDE offers. Has anyone used emerald as a window decorator for KDE/Plasma?

Two compiz features I use a lot that I didn't see in KDE is the ability to group windows together. And also the ability to shrink a window's size and still have it functional.

I may look into seeing what it will take to get compiz at least compiling again. Right now portage complains that it's using EAPI6 which is no longer supported.

CooSee · Post by **CooSee** » Mon Jan 23, 2023 8:46 pm

i used ebuilds from this overlay https://github.com/ethus3h/compiz-reloaded-overlay long time ago (now using Sway/Waybar/Wayland only).

maybe one of the forks are still usable https://github.com/CerisWhite/compiz-reloaded-overlay

one day, some ebuilds won't get emerged anymore, therefore i started compiling many packages myself - it's not that hard - you'll learn alot, doing so

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:57 pm

I've made my own Compiz-reloaded overlay and have converted it from EAPI6 to EAPI8. I've made a pull request against the CerisWhite overlay for this. If anyone want to use my overlay let me know. These EAPI changes means I can emerge ccsm (at least) and portage doesn't complain about the EAPI version any more.

CooSee · Post by **CooSee** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:01 pm

I've made my own Compiz-reloaded overlay and have converted it from EAPI6 to EAPI8

yes, i'am

for you.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:19 pm

Wayfire anyone?

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:38 pm

Zucca wrote:Wayfire anyone?

From what I've seen Wayfire (as well as the KDE compositor) aren't anywhere near as feature rich as Compiz. I'm not ready for Wayland, I don't think it'll work in my 6 monitor, 2 xscreen setup. As it is I have modified the Plasma source to get 6 monitors working (because of the way Plasma identifies monitors by their output name assuming they're unique when they're not).

Post by **asturm** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:48 pm

You may want to try Plasma 5.27 beta since it contains rewritten multimonitor support.

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:55 pm

asturm wrote:You may want to try Plasma 5.27 beta since it contains rewritten multimonitor support.

Thanks, I'll wait until it's an official release version as this is my production rig and I need it to work.
I'm not sure how the devs fixed the monitor identification issue but doing it by output name (e.g. DVI-0) was never going to work with people that have more than one GPU. They could put in a GPU number prefix to that, that would work. There's also a bug where you can't run Plasma on more than one xscreen at one time.

Post by **asturm** » Tue Feb 14, 2023 7:48 pm

Plasma 5.27.0 was released today.

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Tue Sep 26, 2023 2:13 am

Here's an overlay that allow compiz to install at the date of writing this. The main change is upgrading the EAPI version from 6 to 8:

edward_scott · Post by **edward_scott** » Mon Jul 08, 2024 10:07 pm

allistarM wrote:Here's an overlay that allow compiz to install at the date of writing this. The main change is upgrading the EAPI version from 6 to 8:

how does one migrate from ethus3h's overlay to yours? is it just a matter of updating the URL in repos.conf, or is there more to it?

allistarM · Post by **allistarM** » Mon Jul 08, 2024 10:34 pm

edward_scott wrote: how does one migrate from ethus3h's overlay to yours? is it just a matter of updating the URL in repos.conf, or is there more to it?

You should be able to remove that other overlay and then add mine in. I'm not sure how you have this configured, but if you're using "eselect repository" you should be able to list your repos like this:

Code: Select all

eselect repository list -i

find the compiz one you ant to remove and remove it:

Code: Select all

eselect repository remove xxx

(where xxx is the number of the repo)

then add in the new one:

Code: Select all

sudo eselect repository add compiz-reloaded git https://github.com/allistar/compiz-reloaded-overlay.git

Then do a sync:

Code: Select all

eix-sync

I don't do this as I have that repo installed as a local repo. Also note that I don't maintain it unless something is broken I need to fix. But it's been working for me for a while.

edward_scott · Post by **edward_scott** » Tue Jul 09, 2024 1:38 am

that did it, and now the "EAPI=6 not supported" errors are gone. perfect!

ty for maintaining this new overlay.

ajiram · Post by **ajiram** » Tue Dec 24, 2024 1:05 am

allistarM wrote:Here's an overlay that allow compiz to install at the date of writing this. The main change is upgrading the EAPI version from 6 to 8:

it doesn't work anymore

is there a possibility of an update?