On Monday 01 June 2026 00:10:21 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2026 Mon, 1 Jun 08:04:27 +0200
Thierry de Coulon via tde-users scripsit:
On Monday 01 June 2026 03:41:25 William Morder via tde-users wrote:
Suddenly, just within the past week or two, definitely since I reinstalled my OS, I am seeing this thing called compton-tde running always near the top of top. It doesn't seem to do anything special or new, yet it is new to me, always to be seeing it.
I thought, Well, it's been a long time since I really messed up my system, but I will fear no unknown software. So I killed the process, it disappeared, and I cannot detect any change in my system, except that compton-tde no longer appears in top.
I did do a search for compton<-without-tde>, but this tells me nothing more. It does something important, one supposes, but we know not what.
Bill
AI tells me "Compton X11 compositor, a lightweight program that provides window effects like shadows, transparency, and fading."
It's the good old composition manager that's responsibe for "real" transparency and most of all dropshadows. It comes from the times of wobbeling windows and turning cube deskop switchers ... IMO it's enabled when you use "real" transparency for konsol etc. If you don't need dropshadows then diable all dropshadow stuff in kcontrol and killl comptopn-tde :) Oh, there are two kinds of dropshadows in kontrol, don't remember which one to use ...
Description: compositor for X11, based on xcompmgr compton is a compositor for X11, based on xcompmgr. In addition to shadows, fading and translucency, compton implements window frame opacity control, inactive window transparency, and shadows on argb windows. Homepage: https://github.com/chjj/compton Tags: role::program, x11::composite-manager
Nik
But where does this compton-tde hide? Can it be removed or disabled completely? It seems to slow down my system, because that's the only difference I notice when I kill it. It may be that I don't actually use anything for which I need it, but somehow compton-tde just started appearing out of nowhere, and now always runs near the top of top until I kill the process. Then it never returns, and I never miss it.
I don't want to remove it completely, if it actually does something that I might need; but I can at least disable it.
You mentioned using kcontrol to change features such as transparency and dropshadows. Running kcontrol turns out to be the Trinity Control Center, and I already know that place. But when I look at windows, fonts, etc., I already have everything stripped down almost to pre-KDE3 levels.
I don't see compton on the list of my running processes, maybe your X settings are different.
Thierry
From my little bit of research, I gathered that most processes that have comp- somewhere in the name often refer to some kind of compositor, thus they change the appearance of windows ... transparency, shadows, etc.
I don't use fancy desktop effects -- or I don't think so -- and try to keep my system as low in usage of resources as possible. It looks like an art-school dropout tried to slap a quick coat of paint on an old retro system. But I kinda like that.
On the other hand, I tax my system's resources almost to the brink, what with sometimes 50 documents open in KPDF, likewise in OpenOffice, as well as sometimes, when I am on a research binge, or just got lost websurfing, I somehow end up with about as many tabs open in my browser, and forget how and why I got there.
The main thing is, I would like to disable or remove compton-tde, if I don't actually use it, rather than having to kill the process every time I start up.
Bill