Using Picom for a tear-free experience in Xfce
People who are experiencing screen tearing in Xfce can try out the following method.
Compton has been replaced by Picom
Installing picom
Picom - is an X compositor which supports xrender and glx (opengl) backends.
To install it from the command line:
user $ sudo pacman -S picom
Configuring picom
Picom is configured by editing ~/.config/picom/picom.conf.
The following are some commonly used options:
~/.config/picom/picom.conf
backend = "glx"; glx-no-stencil = true; vsync = true; unredir-if-possible = true; # Shadow shadow = true; # Enabled client-side shadows on windows. shadow-radius = 7; # The blur radius for shadows. (default 12) shadow-offset-x = -7; # The left offset for shadows. (default -15) shadow-offset-y = -7; # The top offset for shadows. (default -15) shadow-exclude = [ "n:e:Notification", "n:e:Docky", "g:e:Synapse", "g:e:Conky", "n:w:*Firefox*", "n:w:*Chromium*", "n:w:*dockbarx*", "class_g ?= 'Cairo-dock'", "class_g ?= 'Xfce4-notifyd'", "class_g ?= 'Xfce4-power-manager'", "class_g ?= 'Notify-osd'", "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c" ]; # Opacity detect-client-opacity = true; # Window type settings wintypes: { dock = { shadow = false; }; dnd = { shadow = false; }; tooltip = { shadow = false; }; };
Disabling xfwm4 compositor and enabling picom
The following command can be used to turn off xfwm4's compositing feature:
user $ xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false
Create a new file ~/.config/autostart/picom.desktop with content
~/.config/autostart/picom.desktop
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=0.9.4 Type=Application Name=Picom Comment=X11 compositor Exec=compton -b OnlyShowIn=XFCE; StartupNotify=false Terminal=false Hidden=false
Now one could logout and login again to see if picom has been activated.
To check if picom is working following command can be used:
user $ pgrep -l picom