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Spaceferret
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Post subject: black windows with compositing enabled
 Posted: 29.05.2011, 00:52
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Joined: 2010-09-13
Posts: 96
Status: Offline
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| I get black window every time I try to open more than 3 windows at the same time,I noticed that it only happens with windows effects (compositing ) enabled.Not sure when it started but it was not like that from the beginning.I wonder whether tweaking my nvidia settings can help to solve this ? |
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arwa
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Post subject: RE: black windows with compositing enabled
Posted: 04.06.2011, 10:23
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Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 183
Status: Offline
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I had this issue for years using the nvidia driver and the OpenGL compsiting backend in KDE. How many windows you can open without this issue seems to depend on the size of the video RAM. It is a known issue (search for "black window problem" in the web) not only in KDE, but also in compiz. Well, it should not happen with 3 opened windows. But maybe it depends on the number of virtual desktops, the size of the windows, etc.
I have workarounded this problem by using the xrender extension as backend. Because this is slower than opengl I set the animation speed of all effects to "instant". So I can use the benefits of the effects and do not have a problem with black windows.
Because of this issue I will try an intel i5-2500k sandy bridge processor with the on board (on chip) GPU in my next PC. Hopefully this gpu is supported fine today. |
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Spaceferret
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Post subject: RE: black windows with compositing enabled
Posted: 05.06.2011, 01:09
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Joined: 2010-09-13
Posts: 96
Status: Offline
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| Thank you arwa for your input,I can open more than 3 windows with compiz running providing they are not all maximized,turning off desktop effects prevents it from happening . I'm puzzled by the fact it never have happened before (and I'm not sure how to define 'before' ).I guess I'll have to live with it,although it can be annoying . Thanks again ! |
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arwa
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Post subject:
Posted: 05.06.2011, 10:03
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Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 183
Status: Offline
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Maybe there are some new effects that consume more graphic memory than before. Try to deactivate each effect that you do not need, like "blur" or something.
Also there was an issue with a memory leak in the graphics cache of KDE so it had a positive effect to turn off all animations in the oxygine widget style and oxygine window decorations. But AFAIK this was fixed in KDE4.5 or 4.6 already.
Note that this is an nvidia closed source driver problem. Other drivers seem not to make this trouble. So maybe there was a change with a new nvidia driver version? I am currently using nouveau. |
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Spaceferret
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Post subject:
Posted: 05.06.2011, 14:10
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Joined: 2010-09-13
Posts: 96
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| Nouveau doesn't seem to work on my machine for whatever reason, I had to disable it from loading during the boot process.It makes sense to assume that some new effects consume more memory,but than again giving the fact that my comp is an old HP Slimline with AMD Sempron I can't expect high performance. |
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arwa
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Post subject:
Posted: 06.06.2011, 07:08
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Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 183
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| For installing nouveau: It is important to purge all *nvidia* packages. After this you have to reinstall xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and xserver-xorg-core IIRC to revert some files that were changed by the nvidia installation. Also I had to reboot once after this. Just restarting xorg did not help in my case. |
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slam
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Post subject:
Posted: 06.06.2011, 07:18
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Team Member
Joined: 1970-01-01
Posts: 606
Location: w3
Status: Offline
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Spaceferret
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Post subject:
Posted: 07.06.2011, 12:54
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Joined: 2010-09-13
Posts: 96
Status: Offline
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Thank you slam, that is an excellent tutorial.Other then this issue with black windows I'm pretty happy with the way nvidia performs on my machine,composing works just perfect .I will try nouveau out , hopefully it's just the driver and not the old outdated comp,otherwise I'll be on my way to a comp store  Thank you guys ! |
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