Due to mesa bug compiz fails on large virtual screens on Intel Graphics hardware

Amain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:47:02 +0000

Compiz works fine on my new 64 bit Dell Latitude E6400 laptop’s LVDS screen. Only after connecting a big LCD screen and using gnome-display-settings to extend my Desktop to this monitor, compiz fails to start and makes the following complaint:

Comparing resolution (3040x1200) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Failed.

I was wondering why. I hoped it not be a hardware limitation. And fortunately it isn’t. At least not in my case. There seems to be a problem in mesa. Before upgrading mesa using a PPA repository where a small patch was applied by the owner of the PPA, my system reported:

glxinfo -l | grep GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE
 GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE = 2048

After:

glxinfo -l | grep GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE
 GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE = 4096

To upgrade mesa, install mesa from the following PPA:

https://edge.launchpad.net/~cavedon/+archive/ppa

The patch seems to be included in Ubuntu Karmic, and is not jet corrected in Jaunty because it was considered a to great a risk at this stage. The PPA mesa packages( libgl1-mesa-dri, libgl1-mesa-glx, libglu1-mesa, mesa-utils ) are working without causing any problems on my system. I now fully enjoy Compiz working on one big desktop with a virtual screen size of 3120×1050.

Links:

Blog Amain » virtual screen

Due to mesa bug compiz fails on large virtual screens on Intel Graphics hardware