The officially official Devuan Forum!

Spock

Member

Registered: 2021-04-02

Posts: 37  

xfce4 Uncertain about compton

Is Xfwm still replaceable by compton? I remember years ago replacing the xcfe window manager with compton and I'm pretty sure I thought back then it was better. I wanted to do this recently but then started reading posts where people were saying XFWM was more embedded than it used to be, so I didnt try incase I messed up my installation. If anyone could tell me the ins-and-outs of replacing XFWM I would be grateful.
I used vertical sync For example, too, and  I hate that screen tear I get when I scroll in a browser even when I have disabled smooth scroll and tried disabling/re-enabling hardware acceleration etc Would Compton solve that? Been so long ago when I changed to compton, maybe a decade ago, or was that something else?
Anyway is there a better Window manager that will work with XFCE4 and are there any good instructions posted elsewhere to get it running
(Should I / Shouldn't I)?

Last edited by Spock (2021-04-05 19:00:10)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: xfce4 Uncertain about compton

Is Xfwm still replaceable by compton?

No. Compton is a compositor rather than a window manager.

You can disable Xfce's native compositor and use compton instead though. The --backend glx option is good for controlling screen tearing and certainly better than Xfce's compositor (IMO).

But it's best to use the TearFree option for the amdgpu/intel drivers or force the full composition pipeline for the NVIDIA proprietary drivers. For nouveau & the modesetting DDX driver compton is the only option.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-04-09 18:19:20)

---

Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

Spock

Member

Registered: 2021-04-02

Posts: 37  

Re: xfce4 Uncertain about compton

Ahh ! you are right. I cant understand why I made such an erroneous post. Of course Compton is a compositor. I knew that and still posted.
I hate it when I post muddled posts
I can only imagine the wine was stronger than I thought it was LOL (read "Embarrassed at making a fundamental error").
I'm sorry to sound a bit thick but where you say

or force the full composition pipeline for the NVIDIA proprietary drivers. For nouveau & the modesetting DDX driver compton is the only option.

Could you please expand on that a bit and tell me more?

Last edited by Spock (2021-04-09 17:35:40)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: xfce4 Uncertain about compton

For NVIDIA cards using the proprietary drivers see the ArchWiki link I provided for a guide to enabling the composition pipeline to reduce tearing.

For the nouveau driver or Intel video cards that aren't using the Intel DDX driver[0] there is no equivalent to the TearFree option. In those cases compton is needed to prevent tearing.

Or switch to Wayland, which completely eliminates screen tearing and doesn't have the window lag side-effect found with the TearFree option or compton's vsync fixes. I like Wayland.

[0] Provided by the xserver-xorg-video-intel package and identified as the "Intel" driver in the X.Org logs.

---

Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power