Xgl is an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers. The development of Xgl was sponsored by Novell to increase the usability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and was led by David Reveman
Checkout this video to see Xgl in action :
I recently installed Suse 10.1 and I have been trying to setup Xgl from the past 2 days ! Setting up Xgl is turning out to be painful unlike the Suse Linux Installation !
This is the sequence of steps I followed to setup Xgl/Compiz (Compiz is the window manager which works in composition with Xgl)
1. Download latest Linux drivers for my ATI Mobility Radeon X700 graphic card.
2. Installed Kernel Source,gcc and make packages.
3. Installed the ATI Linux drivers by referring to this post
4. Installed Compiz by referring to this post
I was all smiles when I saw the “Desktop Effects” tool in the Gnome Control Center. My smile didn’t list long; It ended with this message.

The tool crashes on startup and prompts me to log a bug report on the same !
Anybody know the reason for this error ? I have uploaded the crash log here
Comments on this entry are closed.
hei… check this link…
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17174.html
i just now followed these instructions and installed XGL successfully on my ATI X700 card with SUSE 10.1 x86_64.
hope this will help you.
Regards
Mahesh
Mahesh,
Thanks a lot. XGL is now working !
I had seen that post and since NVidia was explicitly mentioned I didn’t go ahead with the instructions of that post.
The problem was that compiz was not installed properly ! when i opened the gconf-editor, compiz was not under apps. I installed compiz again from the CD (Not from the software.opensuse.org) and this time it installed properly and the plugins were loaded properly.
Have you tried beryl ?
Thanks again 🙂
No. I didn’t try beryl yet. Actually I am facing few bugs with Compiz itself. Keyboard is not working properly after using XGL for few minutes. I will debug further and look into this. Which laptop are you using?
Mahesh
Mine is Acer 1694wlmi. Let me know which keyboard shortcut is not working, the cube related thing is working like a charm 😀
I have 2 more questions for you
According to the instructions in the article, I changed the displaymanager xgl opts to this
DISPLAYMANAGER_XGL_OPTS=”-accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:fbo”
It was pbuffer and I changed it to fbo. However when I open the Desktop effects tool, there was warning saying that this setting is not right for the card. When I updated it was reset back to pbuffer.
And XGL is fast with this mode ? Which mode have you set ?
Also SuseUpdater is asking me to update Compiz ?
Update Version: quinncvs_060920-4.4
Installed Version: cvs_060616-1.16
Let me know which version of compiz you are using.
Thanks
Venu
damn all these beautiful gir. Anandi Hristina.