Picom was forked in 2016 from the original Compton because it seemed to have become unmaintained.
The battle plan of the fork was to refactor it to make the code _possible_ to maintain, so potential contributors won't be scared away when they take a look at the code.
And also to try to fix bugs.
## Rename
In 2019 the project name was changed from Compton to picom (git revision 8ddbeb and following).
### Rationale
Since the inception of this fork, the existence of two compton repositories has caused some number of confusions. Mainly, people will report issues of this fork to the original compton, or report issues of the original compton here. Later, when distros started packaging this fork of compton, some wanted to differentiate the newer compton from the older version. They found themselves having no choice but to invent a name for this fork. This is less than ideal since this has the potential to cause more confusions among users.
Therefore, we decided to move this fork to a new name. Personally, I consider this more than justified since this version of compton has gone through significant changes since it was forked.
### The name
The criteria for a good name were
0. Being short, so it's easy to remember.
1. Pronounceability, again, helps memorability
2. Searchability, so when people search the name, it's easy for them to find this repository.
Of course, choosing a name is never easy, and there is no apparent way to objectively evaluate the names. Yet, we have to solve the aforementioned problems as soon as possible.
In the end, we picked `picom` (a portmanteau of `pico` and `composite`) as our new name. This name might not be perfect, but is what we will move forward with unless there's a compelling reason not to.
[](https://gitter.im/chjj/compton?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge)
__Compton__ is a compositor for X, and a fork of __xcompmgr-dana__.
I was frustrated by the low amount of standalone lightweight compositors.
Compton was forked from Dana Jansens' fork of xcompmgr and refactored. I fixed
whatever bug I found, and added features I wanted. Things seem stable, but don't
quote me on it. I will most likely be actively working on this until I get the
features I want. This is also a learning experience for me. That is, I'm
partially doing this out of a desire to learn Xlib.
## Changes from xcompmgr:
* OpenGL backend (`--backend glx`), in addition to the old X Render backend.
* libXinerama (B,R) (Can be disabled with `NO_XINERAMA` at compile time)
* pkg-config (B)
* make (B)
* xproto / x11proto (B)
* sh (R)
* xprop,xwininfo / x11-utils (R)
* libpcre (B,R) (Can be disabled with `NO_REGEX_PCRE` at compile time)
* libconfig (B,R) (Can be disabled with `NO_LIBCONFIG` at compile time)
* libdrm (B) (Can be disabled with `NO_VSYNC_DRM` at compile time)
* libGL (B,R) (Can be disabled with `NO_VSYNC_OPENGL` at compile time)
* libdbus (B,R) (Can be disabled with `NO_DBUS` at compile time)
* asciidoc (B) (and docbook-xml-dtd-4.5, libxml-utils, libxslt, xsltproc, xmlto, etc. if your distro doesn't pull them in)
### How to build
To build, make sure you have the dependencies above:
```bash
# Make the main program
$ make
# Make the man pages
$ make docs
# Install
$ make install
```
(Compton does include a `_CMakeLists.txt` in the tree, but we haven't decided whether we should switch to CMake yet. The `Makefile` is fully usable right now.)
## Known issues
* Our [FAQ](https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/faq) covers some known issues.
* VSync does not work too well. You may check the [VSync Guide](https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/vsync-guide) for how to get (possibly) better effects.
* If `--unredir-if-possible` is enabled, when compton redirects/unredirects windows, the screen may flicker. Using `--paint-on-overlay` minimizes the problem from my observation, yet I do not know if there's a cure.
* compton may not track focus correctly in all situations. The focus tracking code is experimental. `--use-ewmh-active-win` might be helpful.
* The performance of blur under X Render backend might be pretty bad. OpenGL backend could be faster.
* With `--blur-background` you may sometimes see weird lines around damaged area. `--resize-damage YOUR_BLUR_RADIUS` might be helpful in the case.
## Usage
Please refer to the Asciidoc man pages (`man/compton.1.asciidoc` &`man/compton-trans.1.asciidoc`) for more details and examples.
Note a sample configuration file `compton.sample.conf` is included in the repository.
## Support
* Bug reports and feature requests should go to the "Issues" section above.
* Our (semi?) official IRC channel is #compton on FreeNode.
* Some information is available on the wiki, including [FAQ](https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/faq), [VSync Guide](https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/vsync-guide), and [Performance Guide](https://github.com/chjj/compton/wiki/perf-guide).
## License
Although compton has kind of taken on a life of its own, it was originally
an xcompmgr fork. xcompmgr has gotten around. As far as I can tell, the lineage
for this particular tree is something like:
* Keith Packard (original author)
* Matthew Hawn
* ...
* Dana Jansens
* chjj and richardgv
Not counting the tens of people who forked it in between.
Compton is distributed under MIT license, as far as I (richardgv) know. See LICENSE for more info.
