I'm trying to get compiz working on Debian.

The xorg packages in experimental include AIGLX, so I hoped this would be rather easy... and indeed, just a small tweak to xorg.conf ("Composite" "enable") and I seem to have everything I need:

> glxinfo
[...]
direct rendering: Yes
 [...] GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, [...]
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Radeon 20060327 AGP 8x TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 6.5.1
[...]

So I build a recent compiz (post 0.0.13, from git), and also grab a patch which supposedly adds AIGLX support.

After restarting my Xserver and logging into gnome I see this:

Quite disappointing. Some window borders are drawn, some background, then all drawing is stopped. Looks to me as if the driver freezes. CPU load is 0%, I can switch to the text console, but when I switch back the screen completely freezes. I still see my text console contents, but can neither switch back to text console or to the X server.

The only way to get my system into a usable state again is to login via ssh and killall -9 Xorg.

It's very plausible, that this is an issue with my graphics card. It's an Radeon Mobility FireGL 7800 M7 (RV200 series). Apparently not the best of their products: the official ATI Linux driver doesn't support it. But the opensource driver works fine, I have 3D acceleration at 1600x1200.

Anyway, if someone has more success with compiz without using Xgl or proprietary drivers, I'd welcome pointers.

[Update: if I recall correctly, the results with Xgl on this machine were the same, some window borders were drawn, but it was otherwise unusable]

I don't care about wobbly windows and similar gimmicks - but I'd like to benefit from off-screen rendering for faster desktop switching.

Today I was trying to find some information in the Ubuntu forums.

I'm seriously annoyed. There was one thread that seemed relevant, but it has some 310 pages. Yes, thats over 3000 posts.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu (and I consider this arrogant behaviour) doesn't allow you to search the forum or access attached images if you are not registered.

I can understand things like spam protection. But WTF do you require registration for searching? I mean... I was trying to find out if the Ubuntu community could help, and all I get is "register first"!? Thats pure harrasment of non-registered users.

I don't think I'll bother to remember another username and password just for their crappy forums. I hate forums anyway. And the size of that thread just shows that forums don't scale well. Especially if you can't search.

[Update: yes, I've been a bit harsh here. The front page says that they're experiencing speed issues, and thus have disabled search within the forum. Actually I can't believe that search requests make such a huge load (especially compared to me browsing a 30-page thread...) - but maybe their search function is just implemented badly? I wouldn't be surprised if they do some huge SELECT to search, and don't have an index optimized for text searching.

Maybe they shouldn't be using a closed source software for running their forum. I guess they could just fix the search functionality then. If opensource software doesn't meet their requirements, they're bound to get some support by the community to make the software meet them, if vBulletin actually is better in some points. IMHO vBulletin sucks. And given the speed issues "it is what the admin prefers" might miss some important point - that at some point you can't just keep getting a larger CPU]

Heise meldet, dass auf den kanadischen Microsoft-Seiten Preise für Windows Vista aufgetaucht sein sollen.

Für die einfachste Vista-Version ist demnach mit einem Preis von nicht unter 150 Euro zu rechnen, "ernsthafte" Versionen dann eher 200 Euro (und die teuersten 300 Euro).

Wenn ich mir anschaue, dass der PC den ich neulich für meinen Vater gekauft habe 400 Euro gekostet hat (ohne Monitor), dann bin ich froh dass mein Linux da nur mit 0 Euro zu buche schlug, und die Kosten nicht mal kurz um 50% in die Höhe getrieben hat.

Mal ganz davon abgesehen, dass das 64-bit Linux den Rechner viel besser ausnützt als Windows. Insbesondere wenn mehr als einer dran arbeitet, so kann ich z.B. den Computer "nebenbei" als Rechenknecht für meine KI-Experimente oder zum compilieren von irgendwelchen Programmen nutzen, und mein Vater merkt beim surfen davon gar nichts.

/etc/init.d/cryptmount: 16: source: not found
/etc/init.d/cryptmount: 19: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

Another bashism. Policy violation in section 10.4. Severity "serious", but trival to fix.

I thought we had managed to get rid of all unnecessary bashisms.

Any Debian Developer should use e.g. dash as /bin/sh to avoid these bugs. It's faster, and bugs triggered by that are rare.

Speaking of cryptmount:

Dear Lazyweb, how do I get pmount/gnome ask for the luks passphrase using a graphical prompt? Right now, if Gnome tries to automount the encrypted drive, the password will be asked on some /dev/null device and pmount will hang.