Ubuntu :: Shadows Under Windows With GNOME _without_ Compositing?
Apr 2, 2011
I know Metacity has a flag which enables compositing, and draws shadows under windows. Thing is, I prefer shadows because it helps me distinguish stuff on the desktop - a sort of usability an readability feature for me. However, I don't know if my older Thinkpad is too slow to do compositing in X or Metacity code is not optimized enough (yet), but turning compositing on makes my desktop experience too sluggish for my tastes.
I know Windows XP did shadows without compositing big portions of the screen, and it worked fast enough even for the desktop computers of its day. Anyone knows what are my options here? I like GNOME and/or GTK (haven't though much about the important details here) and would like to keep it. Do I need to switch to Openbox or Fluxbox or something like that? I am on Ubuntu 10.04, Thinkpad T43 with Pentium-M 2.0Ghz, 1GB RAM.
I have searched around but did not find anything similar, so I make a new post. I have installed Mac4Lin icons, theme and font, and I am using Emerald (with "emerald --replace" command in the window manager of compiz) and everythin is fine.
Some few times (every 4~5 days), when I start the system, it opens up as the title, like Emerald is not starting or something. If I logoff and then logon again, it is fine. Not that is a serious problem... just annoying in case you want to demonstrate the "power of the system" in an important meeting and it shows up like that.
Swapped an hard disk from a laptop to another, now on a 2007 Compaq Presario. When in dual screen, the Z-order of windows and shadows it totally messed up. Focused windows appear BELOW nonfocused ones, and shadows appear all OVER the windows.
I have an HP Pavilion DM3 (graphics is nVidia GeForce G105M), running Debian Squeeze with GNOME 2.30.
My preference for DE is Gnome + Metacity + Nautilus. I'd like to use Docky, but it requires compositing. So I'm looking for a relatively "light" compositing manager. I realise that "light" is ambiguous, but I basically want something that won't chew through my notebook's batteries because of CPU or GPU usage.
I know that Metacity is capable of compositing, but as far as I'm aware it's still testing. Some people report that it's smooth and lightweight, others claim that it eats up processor time. I've also seen references to a problem with nVidia, but no actual details.
I'm not averse to Compiz, but I haven't used it before and I don't know what to expect in terms of "weight." And maybe there's something else I haven't heard of.
So can anyone recommend anything? Or dispel my idea that Metacity is not the right tool for the job?
I am trying to get rid of shadows on all my text that has appeared today. This happens using Firefox,Chrome and Opera browsers. Usually I Google any problems and a solution normally pops up via Ubuntu Forums but no luck this time.
I've tried disabling and re-enabling Window Decoration in ccsm, I've made sure "shadow windows" is set to "any". Running compiz --replace doesn't help.
It took me a while and maybe someone else already know this, but I recently added RGBA to give me more transparency. But when I did this the shadows on the dropdown menus on the panel and in nautilus were not shadowed.
To correct this in Compizconfig Settings Manager: Turn on Window Decoration is you haven't already. Copy/Paste this line in the Shadow Windows info box:
[Code]...
That should be enough to get your drop shadows back on the drop down menu items. worked for me. Even works on the menus in Chromium even if the GTK themes window border is off, but is still won't shadow the window if GTK window borders are turned off.
If I set it to None, my window borders and the buttons on the bottom panel disappear (which also was a problem for me in 10.04). If I set it to Normal, the shadows have incorrect transparency. And I also have a weird issue with Terminal as well, but that's less important [URL]... Before you ask about Compiz, it's pretty much always off. Although the problem did start after I started using it. (no screenshot of the None issue because for some reason it won't let me.
I'm using a netbook, and I thought I'd connect a monitor I had in the closet and see how things went. I can get a decent multi-desktop setup working, but it comes with an unusual side effect. I don't know if it's of any significance, but these weird shadows appear on all windows, menus and panels. I deativated any Compiz effects I thought might be arcing up, but that didn't seem to do anything.
For what it's worth, I tried this monitor in KDE and it seems to work fine. Netbook Edition promptly soiled itself and went into deep shock with the monitor plugged in, however -- both screens flickering, Docky spasming out of control. But I digress! The netbook is a HP Mini 210 and I believe this monitor is a Mitsubishi Diamond View DV173.
I find the window shadows a little phony against a light background. Not a big deal, but just curious if there is a way to change this. Tried through Compiz, but that didn't actually change anything.
I would like to install this game with Wine, but when I open one of the exe files I get a message saying the file is not executable and since it's in a CD I can't change the permissions to make them executable. What should I do in order to be able to play the game?
I have a problem with my office 2003, I am not sure whether its graphics problem or is it a bug in wine. I have the latest version of Wine and I installed Office 2003. Everything works fine, I mean I can open the documents, edit them and do everything. The only problem I am facing is that when I click any thing on the menu and expand the menu, the shadows are created and I am unable to see the expanded menu. I attached the screenshot of how it looks so that you have a rough idea what I meant.
I am new to linux and ubuntu, but it seems like this bloody bug has not been solved for years. There are many threads as i googled, back from years 2007, 2008... After lucid, i was hoping something (i do not know, if i should have) and googled recently. Found this:[URL].. That xserver thing (which i have tried before for 9.10) does not work! What am i going to do about this? I cannot even use edge flipping because of that bloody resizing/maximizing problem. I cannot use stuff like docky. No compositing!
Until when should i wait? Is there a possibility of this bug being solved? Should i give my notebook to some windows user and get an nvidia one?
I'm running kubuntu, 10.10, 64 bit on my ASUS X59GL, with 4Gb ram - and NVIDIA on board GeForce 8200m.
I'm running KDE with compositing switched on - trouble is that it keeps saying Desktop effects are too slow and compositing is suspended. Surely this setup is powerful enough - this seems to be getting worse with each subsequent release - (a couple of releases ago, this didn't happen).
It's just happened again, and all I'm running is Firefox, nautilus, skype and dropbox (all but firefox are minimised), and uptime load average is .3 Is anyone else experiencing this problem?
Is there any 'ratings' as to how 'expensive' each of the effects are? - i.e. which are the least impact, and which are the most?
I just installed Gnome 3 shell on Ubuntu 11.04 natty and everything seems to look fine except my windows decorations. May be something simple I'm missing.
Ive been having some really severe problems with compiz on my computer, and Im at a point of utter frustration.
I want to take compiz off of my computer, but I do not want to lose compositing effects, because I run docky (which needs it to run)
Essentially, the problem with compiz, in a nutshell, is that it continually freezes on me when I try to scroll a webpage too fast, or if a fast-paced flash video plays, or anything that might choke up the window manager does. I end up having to pull up a terminal, killall compiz, then restart it manually; it works again until I try to scroll too quickly or something and then it will lock up again.
I know I could run compiz on this computer, but I dont know why this current version will not cooperate, so in lieu of finding a solution, I kinda want to just purge it.
I am a somewhat new user to Ubuntu, and I just upgraded to 10.04 from 9.10. I did not do a clean install, just an upgrade by running "update-manager -d". Once I upgraded, lots of problems started happening:
- I booted up, and nothing came up but text like in a command prompt; not a splash screen. Is that correct? - When I logged in, none of my windows had tops (i.e. Window Title, Buttons for minimize, maximize, and close). I changed the theme and turned on the max graphical effects, and that fixed it. (by the way, I know my graphics card can handle it because that is how it was set up on 9.10)
- ...Then, I took off the bottom panel and added Docky. Once I added my icons to it, I restarted, and then the window headers were once again gone, and Docky popped up a message in the top right saying it needed Composite support turned on (i.e. Metacity or Compiz). I turned it on in Metacity (I also have Compiz installed), but nothing changed. So now I have no tops to my windows and have to resort to ALT+F4 to close windows, etc, and I have a huge black rectangle taking up the lower 1/4 of my screen that is just black, with Docky in it...it isn't just a border around it like some other posts have said, but rather takes up almost half my screen.
When I logged in, none of my windows had tops (i.e. Window Title, Buttons for minimize, maximize, and close). Also docky give an error msg : Docky requries Composting to work probably. And I should click on compiz fusion icon and select compiz window manager every time I boot up. So how can I fix it please??
I turned on screen compositing in xubuntu 9.1 and that scrambled the screen and now I can't read the screen. How do I undo that change? If I alt-ctr-F2 that goes to the command line. Then restartx goes back to the scrambled screen. Why does xubuntu recovery mode not offer any option to redo the video. Sorry, I assumed Xubuntu would ask for a confirmation like 'click yes if you can still see the screen' before allowing a change that can toast the system.
Also I tried:
metacity --replace returns Window manager error: Unable to open X display
xfwm4 --replace returns (xfwm4:145: Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display
I've just installed Kubuntu 10.04 (Specifically Linux Mint 9 KDE, but this is definately an upstream problem)
I installed the closed-source driver for my Ati Radeon 4x series using the Hardware Drivers tool. However, when I now reboot, compositing (desktop effects) are disabled.
Going into the Desktop section of System Settings, I recieve an error message "Compositing is temporarily disabled" Clicking "Resume Compositing" pops up a KWin notification saying I need to press Alt+Shift+F12 to resume compositing.
If I do this keyboard shortcut, the Desktop settings dialogue tells me compositing is active, but really it isn't (no desktop effects, software is drawing the windows etc)
Uninstalling the driver and reverting to the open-source one is not an option for me, unless anyone knows how to make Runescape work in OpenGL.
Whenever I have the composite manager setting ticked my videos get strange lines when I play them but when compositing is not enabled the videos are fine.
Acer 5742 laptop with Intel HD Graphics.In Xubuntu 10.10 whenever I have display compositing enabled, flash becomes slightly (but noticably and annoyingly) choppy. With hardware acceleration enabled, there's a horizontal line about an inch from the bottom of the screen that is fairly distorted, and with hardware acceleration disabled, it affects the whole screen but to a lesser degree.
I'm running 10.10 on a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop. It worked perfect before but I had to do a reinstall of 10.10 and can't remember how to get Docky to work right. At present my screen looks like this: see attachedAs you can see I only have use of 75 % of my screen
I was installing cairo-deck and to get rid of the black rectangle i enabled compositing.I got bored of it so I uninstalled it but compositing was still there! I tried to disable it with
Code: gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool false but all i get is Code: # gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool false
Error setting value: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See [URL]... (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.) I'm using fedora 12 32-bit full upgraded
This is probably already on these forums, but I recently re-installed suse 11.3 and had the desktop effects working fine with the desktop cube animation and everything. But not the case this time...I resume compositing, and try my desktop effect shortcuts, but nothing happens and it comes up saying for me to press Alt+Shift+F12 to resume the compositing again. I do that, but still nothing, and I even re-apply the desktopct settings completely and restart the computer and it comes up saying that none of them were activated or something in the notifications pop-up on the bottom right of the screen. I thought I downloaded the right files (OpenGL??) from the repositories along with basically anything I thought would make it work.
I have been going crazy for a few days trying to enable compiz on my tc1100. I have a GeForge 420 legacy card and I compiled the proprietary NVIDIA driver. I realize that this is an old card. So perhaps that is why NVIDIA compositing is not enabled by default. If I go to Desktop settings and try to enable 3D effects, it tells me that compositing is not enabled. So I figured I best go with xlg. I installed all that is necessary for compiz-fusion. However, the command glx is not recognised. I also cannot find a package called xlg. Only patterns-openSUSE-xlg. Shouldn t there be a package for xlg? How do I enable compositing??
This is the contents of my xorg.conf Code: # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder63) Tue Jul 13 13:31:50 PDT 2010 Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection .....
Just got a VisionTek ATI Radeon HD2600Pro, which my Fedora 12 64-bit system seems to have no problem recognizing natively (though it is peculiar that it shows up in lspci as an a 'HD3600' instead of 2600), so things seemed fine ... til I tried to start X. To be thorough: I went from an nVidia Quadro NVS 285 in the system using drivers from rpmfusion, to this card in hopes of getting better graphics and compositing support. So I tried uninstalling the nVidia drivers and kmods, blacklisting radeon and radeonhd mods, installing the stock ATI driver straight from the ATI/AMD site (which included header compilation), and starting X ... no go. Then removed that, installed the OpenDrivers stuff ... still no good. Ended up removing all Xorg configuration (literally removing xorg.conf) and starting X with bare bones. And now X will indeed start up and go into my desktop environment (KDE), but as soon as I open more than a single application window, the system becomes virtually unusable, and compositing is completely out of the question.
Any advice for drivers/config/setup to get this working? Or do I need to go back to my crappy 128MB NVS card?
Every time I login, compositing is disabled. I have to manually go into settings and Desktop and press 'resume compositing.' When I press it, it says: "compositing has been suspended by another application, press alt+shift+f12 to resume." So if i press the key combination, of course it does resume, but i have to go through this process every time i start the computer. here's my xorg.conf:
