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Compiz Gets Thumbs-Up for Gutsy Gibbon
Da Chronic writes "After a vigorous debate at the last Ubuntu Technical Board meeting, the board decided to ship Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz enabled by default. The decision was made despite the fact that Compiz still has some significant issues relating to drivers and Xorg. 'For instance, there are some problems — like accelerated video playback issues with Intel drivers — that can only be resolved by using the EXA accelerated rendering framework which is still not ready yet. When asked why Intel isn't addressing the driver issue, technical board member Mathew Garrett explained that "Intel are working on the basis that composited desktops won't be ready for rolling out until EXA is stable enough anyway, so it's not a concern [for them].' In the end, all but one member voted to include Compiz in Gutsy."
What name will they use for the release that comes after the "zesty zebra" release?!?
Sorry, pardon my ignorance, but what is Compiz?
:/
Perhaps giving a brief description of what Compiz does in the article is in order?
Don't get me wrong, I would consider myself a fairly adept GNU/Linux user, but that does not necessarilly mean I know everything
Help computer...
guh. Why not make a package w/ auto-configurable scripts available for install? Put a box in adept, or something "Click here for flashy graphics!!11". I run Kubuntu because I like having a *nix compatible desktop, not because I want another toy. I understand that some people are turned to linux for stability, and some for flashy graphics, but why include by default? Aero competition? Hope it's easily (and completely) removable. -z
# cat
Maybe I'm becoming more and more of a luddite... I played with compiz a bit maybe a year ago using XFCE and it was pretty cool, but that's all it was. It didn't actually do anything to improve my computing experience other than look cool. That makes it mostly a waste of electrons, IMO.
But then, I now use wmii almost exclusively, if I'm not just using plain ol' screen.
damn, you be a good poster and go check your links and there goes that frsit psot. oh well...
man, I feel like mold.
or to crash and burn, that is the question. Ubuntu might be making a brave move, or a bad move, but only time will tell. If their gamble pays off, they might be on the cutting edge, and with a marketable, noticeable advantage. If not, well... there's always Knoppix.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
as long as that "fallback configuration tool" that was linked here a few weeks ago works properly, i guess it shouldnt cause too many problems. lets hope that the installer will intelligently choose the correct manager.
We set AC up with the perfect opportunity for a Goatse Gibbon, or a Gutsy Goatse, or a Goatse's Guts, and he swings and misses.
*sigh*
I played around with Beryl a while back. Unfortunately, it was during a period when they were having problems with SVN and their website was hacked and taken down. Since then, I got the gist that they were working towards an un-fork with Compiz.
I really liked it, but there were a lot of problems - nothing insurmountable, but it did take a lot of work searching through forums and playing around with configurations to get everything the way I wanted it. There were stability issues, but I was using a lot of pre-release features and plugins.
So question... does Beryl = Compiz now? And if so, is it stable, or is it just expected to be once 7.10 is ready to go?
How about running on my Inspiron 8000 nVidia GeForce2Go?
I thought it would work in 7.4, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Maybe I'm not just setting it on right. I just want to offload some X processing from my CPU to my graphics chip, to make the workstation run faster overall. I don't need the fancy tricks to work, though it would be nice to try them once.
Is there a list of testing progress per graphics chip somewhere?
--
make install -not war
Actually I love Ubuntu and am looking forward to upgrading to Gutsy when it comes out.
Ye olde Webmaster Forums - since 1998!
Dapper was the last decent release. Since then, every release seems on a downward spiral in terms of stability. Now they're adding buggy compiz _by default_ What was wrong with that 1 click enable system they previously had?
I got bored with Slackware and various other distros... and one day I decided to try Ubuntu's latest release. I was pissed off at XP and said, flatly, if Ubuntu gives me shit, I won't use it.
It's worked since day one. Anything "extra" I've gone and screwed up, I've done on my own. I use the terminal almost exclusively. (Shh: for nethack when I'm not doing other things in vi.)
I just wanted a lazy OS that wasn't XP. Would another distro fully recognize my wifi card, wired card, usb devices, etc? It was easy as pie to get my Microchip PICKit2 working. I am sure it would be just as easy in another distro; but at the point I usually want to work on other things, in other distros, I'm still either playing with ifconfig or getting X to work properly...
Plus, Beryl actually does good things for me: I'll run WoW (via Wine) fullscreen, and still have access to other desktops by simply twisting the cube around to another side...
the decision to include Compiz by default certainly is Gutsy.
Great, just something else I'll have to disable in order to get Ubuntu working on my old box. Hey Canonical, how about fixing initramfs instead of adding eye candy so my machine will actually boot after install?
I browsed the article but didn't see it specify how they'll be going about getting the effects. I presume AIGLX, although in personal experience (been running compiz since the coffee-buzz days on Gentoo), XGL has been the better performer (albeit it requires the proprietary ATI fglrx drivers). For the last couple months I switched to the r300 drivers on my Dell D610 laptop with the X300M card, and while I like the fact that it's free, I do admit I got better performance from fglrx (which doesn't support AIGLX at the moment). ATI's recent moves to open their drivers more may be interesting, I just hope that offering compiz too soon without good hardware & driver support may spoil some peoples experience on it (I am aware Fedora has had beryl since FC6, but it wasn't set by default).
On a side note, I upgraded to Xorg 7.3 (xorg-server-1.4) on Monday, and that seems to have broken compiz-fusion (probably due to the new ABI changes). This is on the same ati card with the r300 drivers mentioned above, re-emerging my xorg/compiz components didn't help (I haven't tried since than though).
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Anyone else experience window redraw problems with the latest compiz?
Windows won't redraw (no text as you are typing, no scrolling, no menu's) until I drag them or toggle their level of transparency.
Using an nVidia 7600GS here.
I teach at a technical high school, and I use Ubuntu, Vista, XP, and OS X in the course for integration lessons. The kids Ooooh at Vista and OS X but when they discover that Ubuntu can do compositing in a flashier way (with Compiz Fusion) than either of the other two platforms and that it is free they immediately ask for one of the Ship it CDs that I happen to keep around.
I'm not saying that I evangelize Linux but since it is free, and I do teach it I find it very convenient to be able to just furnish them a copy on the spot. Flashy sells. It sells cars, bombers and hookers why not use it to sell an OS? Before anyone posts a response about bloat please remember that these are primarily 15 year old kids and the concepts of bloat are just academic to them. They won't care about bloat until they are running their own network.
load "$",8,1
n/t.
I still read that as "A Composting Window Manager".
I guess it depends on what kind of windows you have open.
When a window is covered/exposed you don't need to redraw the window contents - a copy is already on the graphics card.
This makes the whole machine feel more snappy when you move windows around.
Spinning windows also stimulates normal users drool glands. Doing it better than Vista is a good thing (and let's face it, that's not hard to do).
No sig today...
Developers should really concentrate their efforts on more important things like getting rid of the baby pooh by default colour scheme =) /me runs and hides
The main reason so many new, unfamiliar users are converting to Ubuntu (yes, sadly the eye candy) is coming as a default?
Man your battle stations, Ubuntu Forums.
"The decision was made despite the fact that Compiz still has some significant issues relating to drivers and Xorg."
Not to mention that many people who might want to run the latest Ubuntu simply don't have video cards or PCs with the horsepower to run this.
It's just typical stupid geek thinking. For a distro which is supposed to be for new users of Linux, load it up with crap that is guaranteed to blow the install or first boot for a new user.
Utterly moronic.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Depending on how stable all related drivers and devices are by the time Gutsy rolls out, this may very well be the worst thing that could happen to Ubuntu since that bad Xorg update last year.
Ubuntu is cherished by new-to-linux users as being zero-configuration and extremely hardware-compatible. Now they are introducing features which may fail to work with certain hardware. Why on earth would they do this?!
"Intel are working on the basis that composited desktops won't be ready for rolling out until EXA is stable enough anyway, so it's not a concern"
ummm OSX has had a composited desktop for years. Seems pretty ready to me.
That's certainly interesting. Best of luck. The comments are probably going to be full of Compiz bashing. But speaking as a user who prefers a pretty toned-down windows manager on my laptop (xfce, but doing most "stuff" (networking, package managing etc.) in the shell, anyway), I'm running Compiz on my desktop computer (mac mini, Debian stable, Gnome, and Compiz): Sure, there's a lot of useless (but pretty :) iKandy, but also some really nice features: for instance, the mouse's scroll wheel is suddenly useful for a lot of things (shading windows, switching virtual desktops etc.), you've got a useful expose-like feature which displays all windows on all desktops (in such a fashion that you can easily see what's going on in them, close them, bring them to focus etc.), windows can be thumbnailed in a way that makes functions like alt-tab suddenly even informative (you can use alt-tab just to browse the contents of open windows), etc. I've always kind of felt uneasy about the whole "desktop" thing (I prefer(red) keyboard shortcuts), but with Compiz, it suddenly makes sense to have a desktop.
Besides, it runs very smoothly on a mac mini with only open graphic drivers. My desktop feels at least as responsive, and certainly more economic, with Compiz than without (lets say I grab a window and shake it about on the desktop, just to see what happens; in Nautilus, CPU spikes and the window looks like shit, in Compiz, the contents are nicely rendered, and CPU stays at 0%, where it's supposed to be). I've experienced maybe one or two hiccups in more than six months, in which case the wm is automatically switched to Nautilus. Unless you're running a server or using an old computer, Compiz is worth a look.
They have released the docs for their GPU. I have been told time and time again on Slashdot that all that has to happen is to document your hardware and a legion of FOSS programmers will write a better driver than you could.
So why does Intel need to address anything?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just because many of the people who post on the Ubuntu forums are noobs doesn't mean that the distro itself is only for noobs. Sure, Ubuntu is just Debian with lazy defaults - but for many applications that happens to be exactly what is needed.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I can see installing that being ever so fun on my laptop with its ever so wonderful ATI graphics card.
You realize that Kwin is including all of the 3D graphical foofah in new versions, right? Compiz is a WM that you can swap out with Metacity (or anything else) whenever you want, but your desktop is coming with the special effects built-in to the default window manager.
;)
Thankfully, you're using KDE, so you'll have at least 8 checkboxes to disable it.
I agree. It's absolutely awful, these ACs.... *sigh*
i am exactly the same - i just want an os i can use with little hassle, that isn't XP
ubuntu seems more and more stable, faster and more compatible every release and i love it.
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
Since the 3D engine and direct rendering features accelerate rendering windows, toolbar, systray etc.. it ought to be of value to all, even the X users that only use X to open terminal windows and|or use multiple monitors. (most of you guys use web browser also anyways).
I have not yet used compiz-fusion, although I have made sure the graphics card and the freebsd+xorg installation are prepared, when I do I sure hope that it is fairly simple to install a configuration that can be stripped down, so only the the cpu+mem eating code that are needed to render window, toolbar, systray and alike are active, making it efficient. Then I hope it is also easy to enable/disable simple features that suits my liking, with and option to save and switch between different profiles.
But I still wonder if what I dream of is simply a fairytale, or whether this can be expected?
that's a gutsy step enabling it by default.
:)
i guess it does the release name justice
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
OOOOOHHH!!! My Eyes! They have Diabetis now! Too much candy!!
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
If there has to be "vigorous debate" about something like this, then it is not ready to be turned on by default, plain and simple. The article says the developers don't know how stable Compiz-Fusion is, because they don't have data, etc. But they have doubts, which is all that matters. It would be fine to go forward with turning it on by default if all the devs ran it and none experienced any problems. Instead, there are known problems (such as this Intel problem) and some of the devs acknowledge that the thing can crash once a DAY, which is consistent with other experiences I have read as well.
New users (Ubuntu's target, I believe) will try Ubuntu, see this thing crashing all the time, and think "why did my geek friend tell me this Linux is more stable than Windows? My XP doesn't crash once a day."
One dev said "if we don't get it out there at some point it'll never get good enough." I don't see how foisting it on new users will help get it into shape. Are the Compiz-Fusion devs not busy enough already? There are apparently already KNOWN ISSUES that aren't being fixed, so how is turning it on by default going to improve anything? It surely will not generate better bug reports--new users will not know Compiz-Fusion is the problem; how are they going to bugreport it?
I hope Compiz-Fusion shapes up soon or that Ubuntu reverses itself; if not, this release will be a slide backward for many users--it will resemble Vista: a release with lots of paint, but with no improvements under the surface.
Penny - plain text accounting
Is it fair to assume it will be turned of by default on Xubuntu? Doesn't make much sense to enable shiny desktop effects on a distro designed to be compatible with older hardware...
Also, while many people seem sceptical about stability I guess we will just have to wait and see how well they handle the cases where 3D acceleration is a problem. I.e, will it be careful about enabling it if a proprietary driver is needed? How well will the crash handler manage to respond if it doesn't work etc... Under the assumption that it will gracefully disable itself when it notices problems it may not be too bad.
While people complain about needless flashy graphics what this is really intended for is a framework for putting the GPU to work on tasked like image processing. See how Apple's "Core Image" works.
You make your system less safe by doing that. Just do
$ sudo -s
to get a root prompt when needed.
As long as they make it easily turn off and onable I do not think that is really too important. It is definitely not something I ever worried about and having it or not having it makes really no big difference.
I wish as much work would go into all those things that DO make a big difference, like syncing my mobile phone (not possible), moving mp3s to my mobile phones memory card (not possible), using my mobile phone for internet access (not possible), using my GPS device (not possible), remotely operating my digital camera (not possible), etc.
I take it you're not using the savage driver.
This just makes ubuntu unusable for anyone with hardware more than a few years old. I've got a 1300 mhz Duron with a gig of ram and integrated Prosavage chipset. I put the machine together for $300 nearly five years ago. and upgraded the RAM when SDRAM started to disappear. I can run KDE, mysql and apache at once while watching video just fine.
3D acceleration is still buggy and the card doesn't have all the features required for compiz anyway.
The whole planned obsolescence thing isn't supposed to apply with linux systems. Only now it does and that's real fucking lame.
I run Kubuntu because I like having a *nix compatible desktop, not because I want another toy. I understand that some people are turned to linux for stability, and some for flashy graphics, but why include by default? Aero competition? Hope it's easily (and completely) removable.
I like how you call something you don't understand a "toy" to try to insult it. Pure class!
It's not just "fun". It's a compositing window system, with all that this entails. It means less use of your CPU, and using your GPU which is sitting idle right now. Ironically, you imply that it means "flashy graphics", when in fact the old way makes your graphics flash more. Even though it slows down resizing by a tiny bit, it looks much faster to the human eye because there's no window-border/window-contents lag.
Instead of asking why it's to be included by default, ask why anybody would want to see slow, CPU-hogging redraws all day, just to leave their GPU idle. Once the bugs are ironed out, there will be no benefit to removing it.
You sound like those guys I knew 20 years ago who hated compilers.
As a long time Ubuntu user (almost 4k posts on the Ubuntu forum)I learned some things 1. Eye candy will always be worked on over functionality. 2. Ubuntu is a word that means "I don't know Debian exists"
4000 posts? What do you use your computer for? Posting to the Ubuntu forum?
I've used Linux since 1995 (and different flavors of UNIX before that), was a Debian user for several years, and now use Ubuntu and think its quite good (not perfect but I am happy to use it). If Debian had a 6-month release cycle, I might still be using it, but Ubuntu is the best choice for an apt-based up-to-date Linux distro.
At least someone is working on user interface improvements. But I agree that Compiz Fusion is just not ready to be turned on by default, regardless of what the users want.
#!/
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=dell+8600+glitchy+ubuntu+7.04+lines&btnG=Search&meta=
I mean it wasn't like the 8600 was *the* desktop replacement to buy about 2.5 years ago,......
Never got it to work sufficiently well. There was too much ugly tearing that I couldn't find a way to get rid of, and anyway Maya won't seem to run with compositing enabled. Oh well, as long as you can still disable it...
I can't help but think this is a mistake. Unless nVidia releases fixed drivers in the next month, this is going to make the Ubuntu distros look very unstable.
From what I've read, the problem is actually nVidia's: Their drivers are sync'd up with Xorg versions prior to the 132_compositing patch. This patch fixes an underlying Xorg issue required for mobile Ubuntu, but it changes the ABI ever so slightly. So, when you try to use Compiz and an OpenGL program with compositing... BLAM, X crashes and you're back to your login prompt.
This is completely reproducible and affecting lots of testers - just read the bug reports at launchpad.net. It seems to affect users of newer cards, going back to at least the 7600 series.
The bug has been around for a while (people reported it upwards of nine months ago on Fedora, according to what someone said in one of the launchpad reports) and nVidia has not released a new version of their drivers built for the new Xorg ABI. I sure hope someone there gets the idea that maybe this needs to be fixed before Gutsy final.
-J
I've used recent versions of Compiz, but it is far from ready to become a part of the Linux desktop experience. For me at least, it has the potential to cause the entire system to hang, and OpenGL applications show a significant drop in framerates. While I wish that I could use such an impressive piece of technology, it just isn't ready (I'd wait another year). For some reason, I feel this move is to try to one-up Microsoft and Apple, which both have gee-whiz graphics that are currently more stable than what Linux has to offer right now...
I have an Intel chipset. When I try to use miro (or any accelerated video player) or webcam software they crash. I just turn off Compiz temporarily with Gutsy's nice control panel it works great. I'd say this is fine to ship, just put big disclaimers in the installer or something explaining how to turn it off temporarily. Alternatively modify the X server code so that the crashes suggest turning off Compiz.
So does your mom... troll.
Interesting: is it really now the case that Beryl can be run simultaneously with OpenGL-based games? I've got an old Feisty box with XGL+Beryl enabled (on an old NVidia GeForce 3-ish card) & I can't run "Jedi Academy" in Wine without dropping back to MetaCity first. I guess that my Beryl/Compiz install is probably as old hat the video card by now, though...
Anyways it will not enable them by default it is a misunderstanding , it will enable them on capable systems with good drivers, there's a difference.
Bloat is a complaint that comes from guys with computers they should have trashed 5 years ago.
My computer is 4 years old and it handles compiz fusion with quite some stability, I just disabled it since Java hasn't fixed issues with it.
If you hard core Linux geeks don't like the idea, just... do what you are doing already, use another 1337er distro.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Very well put. I just tried out Compiz-Fusion on my gentoo system the other day, with GeForce 6800U graphics cards, and it was pretty... and useful, even. For about 20 minutes, before it restarted X.
Two minutes later, it crashed my entire system, requiring a reboot.
Now, I don't know where the blame for this should lie, but GeForce 6's have been out for quite some time now, surely they should have less problems? But I hear that some people have it pretty much rock solid.
Furthermore, with all the pretty effects of the cube, including the transparency of the cube and all that, my CPU usage was at a constant ~40%.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
I use linux every day all day on at least one of my machines. It is my primary machine. I have ubuntu and compiz installed. Have had beryl installed long before that. My viewpoint is that beryl was a better product, more stable, and better designed. This current iteration demonstrates that some of the programmers just went hog wild with their choices. For instance, the rules thing is going to be a bit hard for many people to grasp. Some may never. But, not only that, there are tons and I mean tons of bugs in this release that really need to be resolved and quickly. Some of the defaults are way out there and a lot of things just don't need to be a plugin. They went to a rule based system with plugins galore but wound up making it confusing and problematic. Most mom and pop won't even know what to do--and yes, Ubuntu is geared for the mom and pop.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
He's clueless. Ubuntu is awesome.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I think that overall it's the right decision. One of the benefits of being the underdog (as linux is on the desktop) is that we are less tied to legacy issues. We can make wholesale changes like this with, frankly, not much blowback (in the big picture sense).
On the other hand, I still can't get Ubuntu to let me play a 3D game (e.g., Tremulous or Guild Wars) while Compiz is active. That and other issues are substantive hurdles that they need to overcome if they intend to push it out and on by default. I'd hate to think that by defualt I couldn't run any 3D games. That would kinda suck.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
but can someone tell me what the "next gen" windows manager does for me, productivity-wise? I'm not trolling -- I'd really like to know why/what people are raving about with MacOSX/Vista/Beryl/Compiz and what they couldn't live without. I'm using Windows XP/2000 for 99% of my desktop use so obviously I'm missing something.
body massage!
Sorry, I don't have time to read your whole post. Could you summarize your thoughts for me please?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Another stupid name
For another shitty distro. Get with the program folks. The general public is not going to buy into this.
I, for one, don't give a teflon turd about what the general public buys. I like it, and will be using it.
Registered Linux User #404114 [url=http://www.punkoiska.com][img]http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/4379/posbannercf5.g
Microsoft gave me $$$
I believe in helping, not just complaining. So I have done my best to help people since I started using Dapper Drake. The almost 4k posts have been mostly in the 64bit section of the English Ubuntu forums. Sadly someone has moded my original post with "troll". Far from it, these are observations I have made in dealing with Ubuntu and its developers. They are not intended to get someone to fight with me.
As proof that I have experience with Ubuntu and the first post was from my experiences. vhttp://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=78588
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
So, my wife has Edgy installed on her laptop alongside Windows (jealous?). She recently wanted to upgrade to Fiesty, but I indicated that Gusty is about to ship in October, and that you can just apt-get update your way to final when it's released, ahead of everybody else. She thought this sounded great, and so we installed it, and everything was working without a hitch, except for two small problems:
* The restricted bcm43xx driver wasn't loading via the restricted driver manager no matter what. (Fixed by "cutting" the firmware ourselves).
* Compviz was pretty, but too slow (simply went in and disabled it).
The specs on her laptop are P4M 1.4Ghz, 1GB ram, ATI 9000 video card, and 80gb hd. This more than Linux worthy machine was having a noticeably hard time with the graphics. Doing simple day to day tasks were noticeably slowed down. Every window operation now took a few seconds instead of being instant, and this wasn't acceptable for my wife.
My suggestion for the Gutsy team is to put together a benchmark for systems, and advise users regarding 3D window management (ala Vista). Barring that, I wouldn't have Compviz enabled by default, but there's nothing preventing stuffing an icon on the desktop asking for users to click on it and try it out.
Sorry Mr Gates, The "WOW" starts in October.
compiz is ok but you genrely dont leave it on couse it can be annoying and slow down your pcs video playback turn it on and go to youtube and watch it lag. even if you have a top of the line pc and ifs powerd by a ati card guess what compiz will crash. this is going to couse some very majer issues with ubuntu and compatbly. i shure hope they misworded it as on by defult maybe they mean installed by defult.
...at least on Feisty, if I turn on Compiz, I loose the ability to remotely control the machine (vino)... Had to remove compiz, or else Joe Sixpack's would activated it and byebye remote assistence
if you plan to use any 3d games, turn compiz off: bzflag, SOF, doom3, all will crash X under nvidia drivers otherwise.
I don't think work allows flicker bandwidth here, otherwise I'd link an image... however, yes, it is worth it. Shoot me an email if you want me to tell you the various versions of whatnot I've got installed; I'll reply when I get home.
hardy herron (which i presume your "hairy hardon" was a derogatory reference to) doesn't even exist yet. Yes the name has been announced as has the fact that as expected it would be a LTS release but there is no hardy directory on the mirrors yet and there won't be until a couple of days after gutsy releases.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Remember: Compiz is written and maintained by Novell engineers - this could be tainted by the MS-N deal, we CANNOT trust that this code doesn't contain any patent infringements or other MS IP!
Mainly because I doubt there's anyone out there that *doesn't* know that his mom sucks
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I just tried turning on "Desktop Effects" on my Ubuntu Gutsy install. I didn't get excited by the basic effects: soft shadows around the windows. I like a crisp picture. The full effects, well the only thing I saw was the wobbly windows, which are pretty but seem to get in the way of nice, simple moving a window to where I want it.
But the real reason I turned it off again was Firefox suddenly wedged at 100%, with blank windows (at first) and then rendered, but still not responding to clicks in its windows. Never mind.