white screen of death with xfce and compiz

[fresnofred]

Probably an old topic but here it be: I have installed xfce4 and compiz on puppy 5.2 on a flash drive. when i change from jwm to xcfe it looks like it will load but instead just get a white screen with the mouse active, but no picture. hoping someone would have found an answer to this prob that has been bugging me for over a year.

[8-bit]

I have got it working once, but cannot remember what steps I took with Puppy Lucid 5.20.
I also had it working with Puppy Slacko 5.3.3 as to xfce4 with compiz.
I tried with Slacko 5.5.2, but never got it working right with a black desktop instead of white.
So I really do not know the secret to getting the combination to work every time.
There is a download called compiz helper that is supposed to help in setting things up though.
A search of the forum may find it as I cannot remember the link.

[rg66]

I believe compiz needs compositor enabled in window manager tweaks for it too work. And, according to the Carolina package manager it needs python and pyrex.

Can you open a terminal in XFCE? Does the desktop right click work, there may be an option to "open terminal here". If you can get a terminal type: "xfwm4 --compositor=on --replace" without the quotes and see if that does anything.

Or try to get XFCE running without compiz installed first.

[CatDude]

Hi

I just set up a fresh frugal install of Lupu-520,
then did the following:

Using the Quickpet installer, i installed my graphics card driver: ATI_fglrx-10.10-Lucid.pet
I believe this is the most important step as Compiz requires acceleration.
After installing that i did as indicated and rebooted.

Next (via the PPM), i installed: xfce4-4.6.2-519-beta-Lucid.pet
after which i cheated a little and simply used: Menu > Desktop > Desktop Settings > WM Switcher Switch between windowmanagers
to switch to Xfce4

Next i installed this: Compiz-0.8.4-Lucid.pet
which complained about a missing file:

Code: Select all

File /usr/bin/wnckprop has these missing library files:
 libxcb-xlib.so.0 

For now i just ignored that and re-ran the WM Switcher again,
which is now found here: Menu > Applications > Settings > WM Switcher Switch between windowmanagers

OK so i now see the Compiz Logo whilst getting back to the desktop,
and as a quick test i open up a Thunar window to see if i can 'wobble' it about.
Well, surprise surprise, it has no decorations (titlebar),
so from past experience i just rebooted to rectify that little problem.

Upon getting back to the desktop i tried to start the CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager) via the menu and failed,
so i opened a console and tried that way.
Here is the output:

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# ccsm
bash: /usr/bin/ccsm: /usr/bin/python: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
# 

So i installed this: Python-2.6-Lucid.pet
which also complained about missing files:

Code: Select all

File /usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload/_sqlite3.so has these missing library files:
 libsqlite3-3.6.12.so.0 
File /usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload/_tkinter.so has these missing library files:
 libtk8.5.so libtcl8.5.so 
File /usr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload/_bsddb.so has these missing library files:
 libdb-4.4.so 
File /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/goocanvasmodule.so has these missing library files:
 libgoocanvas.so.3 
File /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/_mlt.so has these missing library files:
 libmlt++.so.3 libmlt.so.3 libpython2.7.so.1.0 

It would probably be a good idea to sort out those missing files,
but as i have no intention of keeping this install i didn't bother.

Even so, at least i can now start up the CCSM,
so let's see if i can get a few things happening.

Before doing that though, i changed the keyboard model to: pc104 Generic 104-key PC
Menu > Applications > Accessories > Mouse/keyboard wizard > Advanced Xorg keyboard cofiguration (click OK) > Keyboard Model

The reason for doing this is because a lot of the default Compiz key bindings inlcude the use of the <Super> key,
which is the lefthand Windows key.
You could of course change the key bindings, but it's proably easier to just change the keyboard model.

The screeny shows both the 'Snow' and 'Paint fire on the screen' running.

Hope this helps
CatDude
.