With the recent release of Ubuntu 9.04 and the brand new X.org stack, finally I have got quick and usable windows effects in my KDE 4.2 install (using Kwin, not Compiz).
My workstation is a Dell Optiplex 745 with an Intel grapphic chipset
$ lspci|grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
with the default install I had serious problems with X, and with serious I mean textures corruptions, artifacts with KDE/Qt4 applications and all sort of graphic glitches.. really a PITA. Then the great idea: Ubuntu 9.04 now ships with a DRI2 enabled kernel, GEM for graphic memory management and this new Intel-sponsored acceleration framework called UXA, which is supposed to improve XAA and EXA. So, if everything is already screwed, why not give it a try?
So I fired up my vim editor and changed my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look exactly like this, no more no less:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "AccelMethod" "UXA"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DontZap" "False"
EndSection
restarted X and the magic was done. I activated the composited effects in KWin and everything worked like a charm, really flying as it never did and as it is supposed to do (Vista on the same hardware works the same).
So, if you have a similar hardware, I encourage you to try the same. If anything goes wrong, removing this line
Option "AccelMethod" "UXA"
will fall back the configuration to its default state.
HTH
