Bug 219249

Summary:	xsnow does not work
Product:	[Unmaintained] plasma4	Reporter:	Stefan Seyfried <seife>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	normal	CC:	echidnaman, pkozlov.vrn
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Compiled Sources
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Stefan Seyfried 2009-12-18 22:47:24 UTC

Version:            (using Devel)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources

Starting xsnow (http://www.xs4all.nl/~janswaal/Xsnow/) seems to do nothing.

xsnow only gets usable if I kill plasma, but that will make KDE useless.

For KDE3, xsnow could be made to work by calling

/opt/kde3/bin/dcop kdesktop KDesktopIface setVRoot true

But there seems no comparable setting in KDE4.

Especially now, this is a very annoying bug.

Comment 1 Jonathan Thomas 2009-12-19 01:42:39 UTC

It's a bug with XSnow itself. It's a 15 year-old program that hasn't been updated in 10 years, and some of the assumptions it makes today are not valid anymore.

Comment 2 Stefan Seyfried 2009-12-19 14:04:26 UTC

so is support for programs running in the root window generally discontinued? Or can you point me to some documentation on what I would need to change to make xsnow and similar tools work again?

Comment 3 Jonathan Thomas 2009-12-19 14:06:35 UTC

Generally desktops are using the root window these days. It might be better to invest the time to write this as a proper KWin effect.

Comment 4 Stefan Seyfried 2009-12-19 14:56:13 UTC

But with every other desktop I tried it either "just works" (GNOME, LXDE, XFCE, and of course all the simple windowmanagers like icewm and fluxbox) or it can be made to work (KDE3). And it's not only xsnow, there are a lot of programs to reinvent.

But anyway, for me it's not that important, and my users will just not get updated to KDE4.
Thanks for the information.

Comment 5 Richard Bos 2009-12-19 16:51:54 UTC

kwin has a snow effect already.  Just go to kde's system settings -> Desktop -> Desktop effects -> All effects (tab).  n the 'Look' (assumed that this will be word in English), there is the snow effect.  Just enable it and use 'Meta + ctrl + F12' to switch it on.

Hope this helps.

Comment 6 Stefan Seyfried 2009-12-19 21:17:38 UTC

Doesn't help. No 3d (radeon). And also doesn't help xpenguins ;)

I accept that I am an old fart and that I probably need to resort to not as modern technology to get what I want ;)

Comment 7 pkozlov 2016-12-06 15:50:57 UTC

> kwin has a snow effect already
KWin actually doesn't have snow effect.
And there is no way to run "xsnow" or similar programs on that.

How to resolve this? Is it possible to port somehow xsnow to KDE? Do you have some sort of "get started guide" for people who want to implement application which does some effects on the screen (going snow, running penguins, etc...) ?