Hi,
>No shipping Windows or Linux distribution I know of uses video card
>framebuffer to off-load such complex rendering. It's done 100% in software,
>hence why Microsoft doesn't bother to offer it, and Linux desktops are slow
>at it.
>
>
NVidia has its own desktop utility for Windows. It works fine. It also
has a "keystone" function which allows you transform (stretch, skew,
resize, etc) your "entire desktop" freely.
>But until these features ship as standard in either Windows or Linux
>distros (think Fedora Core 5 / RHEL 5 / CentOS 5 time-frame ;-), don't
>expect good performance with opaque desktops where the software is
>doing really slow and ugly memory maps to/from the video card, over
>the system interconnect, etc... I.e., don't blame Linux for attempting
>to implement a feature in software that Microsoft won't care attempt
>because it has the same issues. ;->
>
>
There is a new X extension called RENDER. It comes disabled with xorg
server, however once you enable the extension and install necessary user
level tools, you'll have hardware accelerated (ie: true) transparent
windows.
See my previous post. I've tried the setup on a gentoo installation and
it works very well.
-- sukru
