Alhamdulillah, I finally managed to get Xgl working on SuSE 10.0. The Novell people updated their OpenSuSE wiki, and that information was enough for me to get it to work.
It is everything I imagined and more. It’s extremely pleasing to the eyes, smooth, fast, and useful (not just cute).
Nevertheless, I can’t use it all the time, for a number of reasons:
1. I can’t get it to work right in KDE. The compiz window manager is for Gnome. Although I was able to replace KWin with compiz, the taskbar ignores new windows. That’s simply unacceptable. Also, the pager and other kicker features simply do not work.
2. I won’t use Gnome. It is just not my preference, and I think KDE is superior for numerous reasons, which, mentioning all of them would make this post unduly long. Although Xgl is tempting, my preference for KDE greatly outweighs it.
3. Most importantly, Direct Rendering is apparently inoperable with Xgl. (someone can correct me if I’m wrong). That means no 3D games or anything else that requires OpenGL.
I am hopeful that, when KDE 4 comes out, Xgl will be ready for prime time.
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My tech man
I have tested Xgl and compiz on Gnome as well as KDE and works fine on both.