The Road to KDE 4: KWin Composite Brings Bling to KDE
Posted by Troy Unrau on Wednesday 30/May/2007, @09:14 from the two-competing-3D-window-managers-once-again dept.
KWin, KDE's window manager, has been around since KDE 2.0 (replacing KWM in KDE 1.x) and has grown to be a mature and stable window manager over the years. For KDE 4, however, there were a few people rumbling about visual effects, and perhaps KWin was feeling a little envious of its younger cousins Compiz and Beryl. While these new effects have created a lot of buzz around Linux and UNIX, long-term KDE users have wished they can enjoy the effects of Compiz/Beryl while still having the tried and tested window manager that is KWin. As a result, for KDE 4, KWin has received a huge graphical upgrade, with composite and GL support. Read on for more details.
KWin has implemented effects in a way that allows a number of different rendering methods to be used, depending on your specific combination of hardware and drivers. These features have brought KWin rapidly into the era of dazzling eyecandy, along with some pleasant surprises on the usability front. This effort has been spearheaded by Lubos Lunak (a man known for his efficient code) and his team, with special mention to Rivo Laks and Philip Falkner for their contributions.
Effects are disabled by default at the moment, although that may change before KDE 4 ships, and distributions may decide to alter this setting anyway. When enabled, the effects are designed to degrade gracefully. If GL is not available, KWin disables GL effects but still allows Composite effects where possible via XRender. If XRender is not available, it falls back to plain X, running in the same fashion as the present KDE 3 version. To get the full array of effects, you need to have a video card (and driver) that supports AIGLX, XGL or use the proprietary Nvidia driver.
Once the effects are enabled, it's simply a matter of choosing which effects you'd like to activate. So far, Rivo Laks has been working on the effects plugin selection interface (see the screenshot below). The new plugin selection widget shown is making its way into various parts of KDE - it does automatic dependency checking, so once the dependency tree is known, it will intelligently enable or disable dependent plugins. This widget is also showing up in other parts of KDE 4.
(as you can see in the image, this dialog is quite new - less than a week old - and is missing all the icons...)
Lubos has been periodically blogging about the effects that KWin is now capable of, and has recorded a number of videos showing them off. Since video capture on my system is rather chunky, I will present his recordings instead. So, without further ado, I present some of the more popular of his flash videos, hosted by YouTube. If you are interested in more, please visit his YouTube User Page
The Present Windows Effect - a very useful effect that falls into both eye-candy and usability categories...
The Desktop Grid Effect - those familar with the Cube effect may note that this is not quite as flashy, but probably more useful. Doesn't mean there cannot be a Cube effect for KWin though.
This one shows the above two effects, as well as the Alt-Tab thumbnails, but it shows that the effects work great, even when the windows contain active videos.
Zoom Effect and Magnifier Effect: some accessibility related features that everyone may find useful, depending on your specific needs.
Effects like this one make people go "Wow". The first part of this video features the Fall Apart Effect, which basically has a window blow up. It's amazing how well this effect can be demonstrated in a low quality flash video...
Aside from Lubos, many of the new effects and underlying core components were programmed by Rivo Laks and Philip Falkner. They are responsible for many of the effects you see in the videos, including the Present Windows Effect, and the improved Alt-Tab dialog. There have been a number of contributions from others as well, and they are always looking for new and interesting ideas. In addition, KWin for KDE 4 builds on the already existing KWin version which has had dozens of people contribute to it over the years.
The window decoration shown above is called 'kwin3_crystal' and is still set as the default in SVN. It is simply a port of the existing KDE 3 Crystal window decorations, however, a new KWin window decoration is still in the works for KDE 4 - it hasn't been made the default yet, so I haven't been featuring it. When it does eventually become the default, you'll be sure to hear about it here (and likely in Danny's KDE Commit-Digest as well...).
KWin for KDE 3.x implemented a very simple composite manager, allowing simple effects such as window transparencies, fading menus, shadows, and so forth. The code was not too complex, but the infrastructure was not in place to seriously extend the effects to GL powered goodness. When the KDE 4 development series opened, it was seen as an excellent time to rewrite some of KWin's internal structures in order to support such effects. There were initial considerations of implementing support for the existing Compiz and/or Beryl system of effects via plugins, but there were technological hurdles that prevented this. I won't go into the technical details as to why this decision was made, however, it is important to note that KDE 4 will still work with Compiz/Beryl should the users choose to use that software instead of KWin.
Additionally, while KDE 4 will be supporting a number of platforms with libraries and applications, KWin is one of the applications that will not be making the switch as it is inextricably tied to X. This should be considered to be a Good Thing(tm), as it ensures that KDE will always be the best looking when used with Linux/UNIX, and hopefully it (and related KDE Workspace technologies, like Plasma) will remain a unique benefit of using a more open operating system.
KWin promises to ensure that KDE get the graphical boost it needs to keep the eye-candy folks happy, while providing new and usable features for the desktop environment that would not have otherwise been possible. Yet, it maintains the rock-solid foundation that a long history as an integral part of KDE has provided. It will still work (with reduced levels of effects) on any system that KDE 3 ran on, so no-one is left out in the cold. It is already the default for KDE 4 in SVN, and will be showing up in future beta releases.
On a personal note, I've found that KWin on my system was dropping down into XRender mode due to some X settings I need to fix, but it has been perfectly stable for me over the last two weeks. In fact, every week when I'm rebuilding KDE 4 to write these articles, I am more amazed at how quickly it is becoming stable and useful. If you are interested in testing it out for yourself, check to see if your distribution has packages available. I am aware of the existence of at least one live CD (where you don't have to risk messing with your system) that is available at the KDE Four Live website. They update the Live CD every few weeks, and currently has the KDE 4.0 Alpha 1 packages. Additionally, if you are brave enough to test the Composite features, and are having problems, have a quick look at the Composite HowTo.. If you have problems, please report bugs using the the KDE Bug Tracker by selecting the KWin program, and the "composite" component.
Ok, it's nice to see, how much kwin have grown on the optical side, and there are very usefull things, but, is this all? IIRC there were plans to implement features like the window-handling as seen in ratpoisen(?), ION and wmii, or tabbed windows like fluxbox have them. Also, there were talks about some layer-things, but i don't remeber if this were for kwin or for plasma.
Good work everyone on kwin. However, what is the difference between using kwin and using beryl with the aquamarine decorations (this uses the kwin decorations)? I just don't understand why it is better to work on kwin directly rather than build on beryl with aquamarine.
I mean, what are the minimum requirement to play GL or XRand efects? For example, Can I play the efects withslowdowns in a ati r128? Can we use a xinerama setup? And a remote X display?
Your article are to me good.
You make it a way I so rarely have questions left after I read, you rock.
And good work kwin devs.
Now, past the thanks :
I am lucky enought to have an old ATI runing with OS drivers, with both comiz or beryl.
But I quickly returned to Kwin.
Why ? because even whithout the fancy eye candy, kwin is actualy usable. the two above can't claim the same. that's all
And no, I don't mean they are buggy ( ok, freezed the computer about two or tree times a mounth, but not so bad to stop using them if they had been good,hey )
I may be cool to have different shadows sizes : if a window is active, the shadow is larger (like if the windows higher) and if the window is inactif, the shadow is small, as if it is put on the desktop
I think this work is great - what he has also done is provide a way to capture the screen shots, plus that rather neat red highlighting with the mouse. As far as I can see this will be a very usable desktop. In my opinion the eye-candy is useful in adding a tactile feel to the desktop. This is important and also provides useful accessibility options too.
As I have played with Compiz and Beryl they are pretty, but complex to configure (this already looks clearer), and miss the quality window management stuff described above.
Whatever the eye-candy brings the stability of Kwin is a great asset - I want to do work after all and I need a stable WM to do that.
Great work, but it would be really amazing if these videos were also
available in theora format [insert the regular rant about
free vs closed formats here]. It's really depressing to miss out
on all the fun...
Also, off-topic but, is there some way for third party applications
to know when it's running under the gl version of kwin? Does it still
use "kwin" for _NET_WM_NAME or something distinct?
The Desktop Grid effect is AWESOME, and definitely seems way more useful than the beryl/compiz Cube (which, frankly, is only good for eye candy). I think it will make virtual desktops much more usable. Great to see that Kwin is doing sensible and exciting things with these capabilities!
As always The Road... series delivers an excellent run down. I really like how you pointed out that Kwin is mature, whereas compiz and beryl are still the new guys (yeah beryl is sweet, but it is crash city sometimes). I totally support the home team solution.
Since other people use this as a place to deliver critiques I have a small one. The desktop grid should scale so that the virtual desktops are still in the same aspect as they are on the monitor. Maybe the addition of black bars like on a widescreen movie would be a good solution.
Speaking as an exclusive KDE user I am very disappointed. I see this as nothing more than fragmentation. I know it was said that there were technical issues in working with the existing Compas+Beryl project. However I can not really see anything but ego here and it is bound to promote some sort of Desktop War Revisited. I do note the great pains that they have taken to let people jazz up their desktops and that must be some great code. However it is my opinion of ego, fragmentation and a new desktop war happening.
While I like these video's, there is one thing that Kwin still cannot do: really maximize a window! By this, I mean that the border around the window really disappears, and I can, finally, scroll in konqueror without having to look at the right edge of the screen to see if my cursor is on the scrollbar. I could just flip my mouse to the side and scroll.....
sigh.
well, you can allways hope..! :-(
Although KDE support d&d (drag and drop) but KWin fails KDE applications by making it impossible to do drag&drop.
because the focus changes to the window as soon as the mouse button is pressed (clicked and held), which makes it impossible to do drag and drop in KDE.
whereas, in windows, when the user releases the mouse button only then the "focus" shifts to the window.
Try for yourself:
1. open konqueror file manager or Dolphin (first window)
2. maximize the first window
3. open another instance of konqi or dolphin (second window)
4. but do not maximize it.
5. Now, try dragging a file from the "maximized" first window to the "unmaximized" second window.
6. as soon as you click on the file in the maximized window the focus is given there and lo and behold! your whole idea of drag&drop is destroyed.
it was reported in KDE 3.3 by me, and this thing is
fixable.. just use "release to focus" instead of "click to focus."
Could someone from here with a youtube account posts some comments?
I just saw the wavy-windows effect (via youtube-dl and mplayer) and I rather liked it, since it would make a great screensaver.
Many of the people there seem to just think "not what I know" or "doesn't work for what I want it for, therefore it's useless" or similar, and I think that the videos should get some really fair feedback.
In the first screenshot... Why is the "Configure window effects"-field wider than the field (the one with "PresentWindows", "blur" etc.) beneath it? A tiny nitpick, I know, but I think that details like that are quite important (and quite easy to fix).
Hi, I'm very impressed with the progress KDE 4 is making - keep it up!
Just wondering about KDM (the theme manager from http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=22120) - apparently it is being integrated into KDE 4? What's the latest? Will the theme manager be as easy to use as GNOME's (i.e. drag-and-drop the theme file into the manager and it's ready to go)? How will it interact with kwin_composite and plasma? I really hope theming becomes easier with the next KDE release.
well you don't want kwin to be ported to windows so people will have more reason to use a more open platform, but require me to use non-free-software to be able to follow this article about free software?
come on guys, we really should be better than this. and dont tell me its a matter of bandwidth. if it is, go send me the files in ogg theora and i'll host 'em!
or just host them on theorasea.org, maybe? same features as youtube, but free codecs and free software....
Congratulations for nice 3D effects.
However, I would really appreciate "real" 3D effects like Sun have it in their Java Window-Manager and Metisse can do. e.g. turn windows around and have some things (like the options dialogue or just the possibility to write notes onto the back side) on the back side. e.g.
Another cool thing would be to support the now ever more upcoming "virtual reality" 3D goggles and have REAL 3D desktops.
"Additionally, while KDE 4 will be supporting a number of platforms with libraries and applications, KWin is one of the applications that will not be making the switch as it is inextricably tied to X. This should be considered to be a Good Thing(tm), as it ensures that KDE will always be the best looking when used with Linux/UNIX, and hopefully it (and related KDE Workspace technologies, like Plasma) will remain a unique benefit of using a more open operating system."
This is a REALLY weird attitude. Actually it's bizarre. I know it is common among Linux people nowadays to say "hey, let's not port this and that app to Windows, so we can make Linux look cooler". This whole attitude smells of Bill Gates. Linux and open source projects can only be truly successful (and by successful, I mean more than just having most of the market share or whatever) if they show respect to ALL users.
Additionally, what if I actually need to use Windows or Mac OSX some time? Or what if I want to do it? Why shouldn't I be able to run KDE - my favourite environment then?
Now, I'm pretty confident that the KDE devs didn't mean to "lock" KWin to keep Windows and Mac users out in the cold, but it's still nothing to cheer about. And I hope that future versions of KDE will be even more portable.
Other than that paragraph, this was a great article, and I'm looking forward to KDE4 more than ever. I think the KDE devs made the right move to work on KWin instead of Compiz/Beryl, and it looks like it will be easy to add more functionality and usability along the way aswell. Great work!
It's some good effects with potential, but I think some thought needs to be put into keyboard/mouse interaction. Switching between them involves some lag time, and when I see the mouse pointer move, and then typing for an expose-like extension, I think some refinement could help.
all the changes in KDE4 really make me wonder what the future holds, I love KDE. and couldn't imagine useing any other Desktop, but more and more sillyness keeps getting added. and once something is added to kde its there forever, dolphin, kbfx, i swear any app written for kde will just be thrown in. and now were talking about composite window managers. which offer very little in useful functionality compared to how much recourses they suck up. It seems a usable effective desktop is not the goal, but how many cool tricks can we throw in. Its free and the developers do a great job, I dont mean to discount all their efforts. its much appreciated. but theres also a user base who has come to love kde. its only natural they might want to voice there opinions or concerns about KDE. just my thoughts for what its worth..
leave the silly, composite effects to someone else berl or whoever, and kbfx umm why kde already has a menu. same with dolphin. and how many mp3 players are we up too right now ?
I guess bash me all you want for having an opinion and caring about my favorite desktop
Great article -- one piece is missing though. How to get this extra module with effects? All I can find in google is how to set up the composite for Xorg (done) or how to click in the translucency checkbox.
But what to do in order to get extra tab/module with KWin effects? I didn't find the answer while googling and I didn't find anything in repos (opensuse).
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Posted by Troy Unrau on Wednesday 30/May/2007, @09:14
