How to fix KDE Plasma OpenGL on CentOS 7 running as a VMWare guest

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By default, CentOS 7 KDE Plasma Advanced Desktop Effects wont allow a Compositing Type of OpenGL. This is a bug; Attempting to enable OpenGL 1.2, 2.0, or 3.1 on a VMWare (workstation) guest causes KDE to crash. The Desktop Effect settings continously revert back to a Compositing Type of XRender.

It turns out that there’s a workaround that’s fairly straightfoward, with one caveat. OpenGL 2.0 will work, but OpenGL 3.1 will not.

Here’s how to use a Compositing Type of OpenGL 2.0 qith the Qt graphics system Raster.

  1. As root, add an KDE environment script to ‘‘/etc/kde/env’’, i.e.

     vi /etc/kde/env/force_opengl.sh

  2. The content of the script should look something like this (note: KWIN_COMPOSE is ‘‘NOT’’ ZERO2, it’s OH2).

     #!/usr/bin/bash

 export KWIN_DIRECT_GL=1
 export KWIN_COMPOSE=O2

  3. Log out of KDE & log back in again (or reboot)

  4. Click Start -> System Settings -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced, change the following, & click Apply.

     Compositing Type: OpenGL 2.0
 Qt graphics System: Raster

  5. Log out of KDE & log back in again (or reboot)

  6. Click Start -> System Settings -> Desktop Effects -> All Effects, select what you want, & click Apply.

  7. A good effect to test & see OpenGL 2.0 in action is the Desktop Cube.