X.org 6.8 and Xcomposite HOWTO

A guide or tutorial on how to get transparent windows


You need X.org 6.8 which includes XComposite, xcompmrg and transset.

There is little real advantage in doing this, it isn't acutally very useful and will make your computer unusably slow. For now at least, it's just for fun.

Download all the source files from http://freedesktop.org/~xorg/X11R6.8.0/src/

While the supplied instructions say you can manage with only the first 3 files, it doesn't seem to compile like this, so uncompress them all.


if it works then


then configure it


will write a file to ~/xorg.conf.new, adjust this to your liking e.g. by adding
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
to the pointer section to get your scrollwheel working. You probably also want to turn on XComposite by adding:

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Then copy the file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now restart your computer to make sure everything is working. I had to recompile kdm because it has stopped doing anything and I keep finding /tmp/.ICE-unix is owned by my user when it needs to be owned by root for KDE to startup.

xcompmgr and transset


xcompmgr is a simple program to start the composite engine and put shadows on the windows, transset is a simple program to make windows transparent.




Then have some fun:


transparent-windows.png