walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm seeing horrible performance from the xfce window manager (xfwm4) > on my main, everyday machine, but not on an older backup machine or > on any of the linux virtual machines I run on virtualbox. > > The symptoms: moving a window with the mouse is so slow as to be > painful, and the CPU usage (on one of four CPUs) jumps to 100% almost > immediately (xfwm4 is the culprit, see below).
I'm using XFCE as DE and xfwm4 as WM. Since I bought a new GPU (Radeon R7 250), I don't use compositing any more because it causes tearing when I watch videos in fullscreen with 3840x2160. With this GPU I also had some random freezes when compositing was enabled. Beside this, performance is very good, regardless compositing is enabled or disabled. Scrolling text or moving windows around is a bit faster and smoother with compositing enabled, especially when other windows are in the foreground. With my old GPU (Radeon HD4550) I always had compositing enabled. Everything was smoother and I saw absolutely no glitches, but performance was also good with compositing disabled, just not quite as smooth as with compositing enabled. > If I open an xterm and run (for example) "/usr/bin/marco --replace", > this sluggish behavior returns to normal immediately. > > After wasting hours on google I finally noticed that I had compiled > x11-wm/xfwm4 with the xcomposite useflag disabled, so I enabled it and > re-emerged xfwm4. > > Now I can get decent performance from xfwm4, but only if first I turn > on compositing by running xfwm4-tweaks-settings. (No, not by running > the puny and feeble xfwm4-settings app: I need to invoke a "tweak" > to make xfce4 an acceptable Desktop Environment on my main desktop > machine. As long as I use XFCE (many years) xfwm4-tweaks-settings is the program to toggle compositing. It's just a name, what is the problem? :-) Or do you mean, that you must enable compositing every time you start XFCE? > <official rant mode> > I remember going through this same frustration with gnome3, which was > (and is) unusable without installing the gnome-tweak-tool package and > using it to customize settings that I still don't understand. > > (That's why I finally gave up on gnome3, and I may yet give up on > xfce4 and go back to mate.) > > Note that I'm not turning off <official rant mode> yet, but I should > mention that this machine is ~amd64 with ati-drivers-15.7 and vanilla > kernel 3.14.51. (Same problem with gentoo-sources-3.18.19, BTW.) I'm using stable xf86-video-ati and stable hardened-sources. I never used ati-drivers because I don't like to have proprietary software on my gentoo box. For me xf86-video-ati works well and has a sufficient 2D and 3D performance. -- Regards wabe
