One question about Xorg vs. Windows GUI...

One annoying thing I've noticed: on Linux with X, compositing (e.g. transparent windows, dropshadows, etc.) is very, very sluggish. Even with full hardware acceleration, using EXA or UXA, whatever.

Whereas on Windows, on the same hardware, compositing is very fast even with no hardware acceleration at all.

Why is this?

 

What distro, what release, what desktop environment, what graphic drivers, what kernel version, what architecture, how did you install this or that software that you use for 3D effects, what theme ...

My experience has always been that Linux is in general faster than Windows on default settings on the same hardware ... now tweak this tweak that ...

Cheers,
Mrk

 

All distros, all kernel versions. Software installed from distros' repositories. Compositing enabled by turning on the Composite extension in xorg.conf and using xcompmgr or XFCE's compositing function.

What matters to me here is that, as I said, compositing on Linux needs hardware acceleration. On Windows, you get fast compositing without needing hardware acceleration. How is this done?

 

Interesting; I always thought it was just inferior video drivers for Ubuntu that caused the slowdowns I was seeing.

 

Hmm!! What was the cost of the Windoze compositing software? We know the Linux OS is faster, so the obvious conclusion is that the difference is in the software apps. After all, compositing isn't actually an OS function.

 

what composing software did you use on windows and which version of windows?

what hardware do you have?

i find linux faster for composing effects.

I have only tryed compiz fusion on linux thou.

 

I'm talking about the compositing software built into the Windows 2000/XP GUI... Take a program like IOBit Advanced System Care Free - you can set the window's transparency. Or in Firefox - if you drag on a tab, you get a transparent miniature image of the tab's contents to drag around. On Linux, you can't get that sort of transparency without xcompmgr or somesuch.