I don't use pixmap decorations in my application, but only one pixmap of size 800x600 was too slow. I used the preferred pixmap functions of GTK2. The expose of the whole 800x600 pixmap took 120 ms (8 fps). That was impractical. Then I switched to gtkglext which in my system apparently uses Mesa with software renderer. (How to verify it?) Now the system is fast. One app renders 3D objects and another app draws 2D objects (http://www.funet.fi/~kouhia/enved7.png). I would like to know if gtkglext in my system uses Mesa and if Mesa uses software renderer. How that can be tested? What I would like to have would be vertex and fragment shaders for audio widgets. E.g., a 2D or 3D knob would rotate with vertex shaders. E.g., a level meter a la SoundForge would have a fragment shader dimming the top of the black-green-yellow-red texture map based on the meter value. Juhana -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software