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.