http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19376
--- Comment #9 from Martin Gräßlin kde@martin-graesslin.com 2009-07-20 03:40:59 --- (In reply to comment #6)
Since KDE guys says that compositing will break any 3D app, then it makes sense to just disable compositing on any 3d initialization (read on each Wine start). Since that's done automatically.
Actually it is more complex than that. Lucas mentioned already most of the problems: drivers. We currently have the situation that for example nvidia driver works quite good, while fglrx seems to be broken. The free drivers are more difficult. Some are working, some not. Here we will probably see much improvements thanks to DRI2 and Gallium.
So the decision to disable compositing automatically whenever a 3D app is started would be too strict. It really much depends on the use case. Let's say for a simple 3D application which just rotates a small cube disabling compositing would be wrong while for a complex 3D game, which is run in fullscreen it's the right thing to do.
I am not really familiar with Windows APIs so I don't know if you have a way to recognize if that is a complex game running or a small simple app.
do other composition tools have similar capabilities to disable (e.g., compiz)?
Compiz currently does not yet support non-composited window management, but their upcomming release 0.9 will support non-composited window management. I don't know if they will support a similar functionality.
The third window manager which is probably interesting in this context is Mutter and I have no idea what exactly they support and what not.
I certainly wouldn't want any program, including wine, to *automatically* mess with my desktop settings, which includes, but is not limited to, compositing.
This has nothing to do with "messing" around with desktop settings. KWin offers the dbus methods exactly for that: temporarily suspend compositing for applications which work better without compositing. When the application ends it will just resume compositing so everything is fine. Just as a note: kwin will post a notification that compositing has been suspended by an external app and the user has the possibility to resume compositing by * using the shortcut alt+shift+f12 * use the button "resume compositing" in effects kcm * use the toggle compositing plasmoid (in the state in svn playground, not the one on kde-look) * restarting the session (no setting is stored)