Luminocity
Luminocity is a cracktastic technology testbed for Metacity.
Building Luminocity
Requirements: a Mar 25, 2005 or newer jhbuild (see the "Getting jhbuild" below if you have not already used jhbuild)
1. Run: jhbuild build xserver luminocity
There are some issues with "DAMAGE" in the xserver module. You need to apply a small patch that hacks around some issues, and rebuild the xserver module. You can get the patch from http://www.gnome.org/~seth/xserver.patch . If you do not apply this patch, wobbly windows will probably run very slowly.
2. Run: patch -p0 < xserver.patch from inside the xserver source directory
3. Run: jhbuild buildone -n xserver to rebuild the xserver with the patch included
Running Luminocity
1. Run: jhbuild shell to enter your jhbuild-built environment
Luminocity reads windows out of a nested / headless X server (such as Xfake or Xephyr), and then displays the windows using an OpenGL window on your main X server (the "host server"). So first we have to start a headless X server, and run an application to display into it.
2. Run: Xfake -ac -screen 1024x3072x32 :1 & (if your screen is not 1024x768, just use XRESxYRES*4x32)
This will start Xfake as display :1, with a virtual screen that is 1024x3072. Why 3072 instead of 768? Because Luminocity starts with 4 vertically stacked workspaces by default. This can be controlled by a command line argument. Now lets start an application displaying into our Xfake server. A terminal is a good choice because we can launch more apps from it.
3. Run: DISPLAY=:1 gnome-terminal &
This will run gnome-terminal, displaying to the Xfake server (which is on :1). Of course, since Xfake is headless, you won't see anything.
4. Run: luminocity :1
This will start luminocity. Notice that we do not start Luminosity on DISPLAY=:1 (like we did with the gnome-terminal), but instead on our main X server (DISPLAY=:0). Luminosity reads off display :1, and displays to display :0. Luminocity will read windows off the X server on display :1, in this case our Xfake instance. Luminocity will then display those windows into its OpenGL window. Congrats!
You can also run luminocity -f :1 to run luminocity full screen. If you include a path to an image after the command, e.g. luminocity /usr/share/backgrounds/images/dragonfly.png it will be set as the background image.
Common Problems
* Moving windows that start partially off the screen Sometimes windows start with their titlebars off screen. To move them onto the screen, you'll need to drag them while holding down the super key (if you have a Windows key on your keyboard, try this). If you have a Windows key and it doesn't work, you may already have it assigned to Metacity using 'gnome-keybinding-properties'. You may have to remap your super key to make this work, esp. if you have no Windows key, e.g. xmodmap -e 'keycode 95=Super_L', which will then allow you to move windows by dragging them while holding down the F11 key.
* Luminocity says that I don't have GLX and refuses to run Are you trying to run luminocity with DISPLAY=:1 (i.e. displaying to the Xfake server)? That will not work. Luminocity neeeds to display to your main X server (probably DISPLAY=:0). The Xfake server does not have the GLX extension. Luminocity uses the hardware acceleration of your main X server. If you are using the main X server, see the next question.
* Everything is really really slow You need to have GLX enabled with Direct Rendering working on the host X server (the one you normally use for day to day work). You can see if its working by running glxinfo | grep direct. If it comes up with "no", you need to figure out how to enable OpenGL hardware acceleration for your card. If using an Intel i830, an ATI Radeon or the like, you can use the open source DRI drivers. For NVidia cards, install the binary drivers available from NVidia's website. If you're sure that you have hardware acceleration going (for example, you can play 3D games), there may be another performance bug. You can try asking for help in the IRC channel.
* I got compile errors related to evdev.c I don't know the answer to this one, but people on IRC have worked around it. Maybe they can fill in this section.
Getting Help
You can try #fedora-desktop on irc.gnome.org . ssp, krh, and owen are the Luminocity developers (and seth may be able to help too), but other people on the channel will know how to solve many common problems. Naturally, you don't have to be using Fedora to join the channel.
Getting jhbuild
Checkout module 'jhbuild' from GNOME CVS (see http://www.jamesh.id.au/software/jhbuild/). Run make and make install to install it into $(HOME)/bin . You'll need to setup a .jhbuildrc file in your home dir. See the README and other stuff in the jhbuild module for help on doing this.
Then run jhbuild bootstrap to setup a basic build environment with autotools, etc. Its important to do this, or future modules will error out when compiling.
