Transparent Windows

[LackeyLad]

is there a transparent windows option on fedora?

[LackeyLad]

a simple no would be sweet too :)

[mhelios]

LackeyLad,

Don't feel discouraged when you don't get a reply as quickly as you hoped. Maybe no-one reading the thread knew the answer.

I use GNOME and I haven't found any transparenvy options. However, when I ran KDE, I found a number of options for this including adding a transparent GUI menu and taskbar. Many themes you can download have these options as well - I can't offer any as I don't use these (admittedly neat) effects.

[foolish]

There are some transparency options in some applications. The gnome-terminal and xchat for example can have transparent backgrounds. The panel can be made partly transparent too.

[LackeyLad]

would i have to then download and install the KDE environment seperate of the system?

and if yes, is that as simple as it sounds?

[mhelios]

You can just pop your Fedora CD in and run redhat-config-packages and install the KDE desktop packages.
Then when at the gdm login screen you can select session and then KDE.

[LackeyLad]

excellent.

i was wrong in my thinking becuase for some reason i thought the effect was a trait of the system and not of the kde desktop theme.

well done tho.

i will say that i appriciate the help on all my questions, even the ones that seem ignorant. Im running low on questions which means this forum has been very helpful and im that much closer to being content with my system.

i appriciate all the posts.

thanks.

[dpw2atox]

I can clear this up fairly quickly for you. No there will not be transparencies in gnome in the near future. The current "transparencies" are more hacks. KDE uses several hacks to get fake transparencies in its menus and gnome said that since these hacks are very dirty they will never use them. In order to get true transparencies you will need both an xserver which supports it and then a program coded to utilize them. Currently XFree86 has no plans to add transparency effects, however there are now 2 other xservers which both have transparency but are not yet mature. They are Y Windows at http://www.y-windows.org/ and Freedesktop.orgs xserver at http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/xserver . Freedesktop.org's xserver is more mature and looks as if it may become to future xserver due to the recent license changes the xfree86 team has done.

[mhelios]

Great info dpw2atox. About the xfree86 licence changes, it's quite a mess I think. It's going to hurt them more in the end when all the major distributions will not ship with 4.4...
http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2004021803026NWDTLL

[Ug]

KDE may use a "dirty" hack, but I love the transparent menus. :p

[dpw2atox]

The whole mess with XFree86 really upset me. I mean they haven't even really added a lot of new features to XFree86 since the 4.0 release and now they do this........I really would like to see Xfree86 replaced with freedesktop.orgs xserver as I think it would be the easiest to port current drivers over to. As for the KDE transparent menu's.......I actually like it and wish gnome would do something like that or at least offer a patch to do that, however the developers refer to it as a dirty hack and choose not to make use of it.

[mhelios]

The big problem is the fact that developers for the XFree86 code are not exactly in abundance. If you want some interesting commentation regarding XFree86 current "state" read some of Mike A. Harris' (Red Hat's XFree86 developer) opinions and insights into there current organisational structure:
http://www.advogato.org/person/mharris/diary.html?start=5