Mindstab.net

So one of the Gentoo dev's got Compiz working on AIGLX and put up a tiny portage overlay. If you are already on XOrg 7.0/7.1 (probably should be on 7.1) then all you need to do is upgrade mesa, libdrm, and xorg-server and then install compiz.

The instructions are all at http://www.hboeck.de/item/338, including useful comments to actually get compiz working.

For me the 'compiz --replace' command failed. But someone came up with a fine idea and so I have a simple script to do it.

compiz.sh

#!/bin/sh

killall metacity &
LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz --replace --strict-binding gconf &
gnome-window-decorator &

and

metacity.sh

#!/bin/sh

killall compiz &
metacity --replace &
killall gnome-window-decorator &

You may need to run compiz with plugin arguments the first time instead of just gconf (which tells it to use gconf to determine the plugins to use. If compiz loads up and doesn't do anything, try changing

killall metacity && LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz --replace --strict-binding gconf &

to

LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz --replace --strict-binding decoration transset wobbly fade minimize cube rotate zoom scale move resize place switcher &

That should make sure the modules are loaded. But after that you should be able to use gconf.

This is totally sweet. Granted still hugely alpha. For me, quake3 has black refresh flashes and totem stays black when playing movies, hence the metacity switch back script for running those apps. But Compiz works for everything else and I have no doubt that with in a few more months these bugs will be resolved too :).

Edit (2006.06.24): Updated scripts a bit.
Also, to get movies working, go into Desktop->Preferences->Multimedia System Selector->Video and set Default Output Plugin to "XWindows (No Xv)".
Finally, the AIGLX section on gentoo-wiki has been updated and is relevant again.