Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade [SOLVED: NVidia proprietary driver]

[Telengard]

I just upgraded my 9.04 Jaunty system to 9.10 Karmic, and then to 10.04 Lucid. And it didn't blow up completely. Hooray!

I had to rename /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get the GUI back after the upgrade. X wouldn't start with the old file in place.

I had been using the NVidia proprietary driver on Jaunty. I'm not at all certain what is driving my graphics card since the upgrade, but it definitely isn't NVidia's driver.

But now my pretty translucent task bar has become an ugly grey bar

Can anyone offer some insight?

Edit
When I first wrote this post I mistakenly believed there would be an obvious and easy fix. I was wrong. That is why there is so little to go on. (Mea culpa!) The details have come out as the thread wore on. See reply #23 for a better rundown of the facts.

[Snowhog]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

The obvious - try a different Desktop Theme.

[Telengard]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

Hey Snowhog, thanks for replying. I really don't believe the desktop theme is the problem here. I'm actually not getting any transparency on the desktop. For example the wallpaper is not visible through the taskbar.

Edit
Removed colorful language from snapshot

[Telengard]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

Looks like compositing has been disabled for some reason. Why did Kubuntu disable compositing?

[Snowhog]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

Yes, it can be. If the DE Theme you are using doesn't support transparency, the Panel won't be transparent. It looks like you are using the Air Desktop Theme, and Air doesn't support transparency.

[Snowhog]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

Looks like compositing has been disabled for some reason. Why did Kubuntu disable compositing?

Okay, yes, that will cause your problem. What GPU are you using?

[Telengard]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

Yes, it can be. If the DE Theme you are using doesn't support transparency, the Panel won't be transparent.

I didn't know that. This KDE4 stuff is more complicated than I thought

It looks like you are using the Air Desktop Theme, and Air doesn't support transparency.

That's part of what's troubling me. Why did the upgrade process cause my theme to be changed at all? And even if the Kubuntu team thinks it is good to change my theme whenever I upgrade, why would they choose one which doesn't show off compositing?


The graphics card is a BFG Tech GeForce GTX 285.

$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT200b [GeForce GTX 285] (rev a1)
$ sudo lshw -C video
[sudo] password for owner: 
 *-display        
    description: VGA compatible controller
    product: GT200b [GeForce GTX 285]
    vendor: nVidia Corporation
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
    version: a1
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
    configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
    resources: irq:16 memory:de000000-deffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefe
tchable) memory:dc000000-ddffffff ioport:8f00(size=128) memory:dff80000-dfffffff(prefetchable)

[Snowhog]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

nVidia Graphics card. Have you checked to see if after the upgrade you are using the propietary driver? Where you using the proprietary driver before the upgrade?

[Telengard]

Re: Task bar panel thingy no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid

I had been using the NVidia proprietary driver on Jaunty. I'm not at all certain what is driving my graphics card since the upgrade, but it definitely isn't NVidia's driver.

The reason I know nVidia's prorpietary driver is not running is because the nVidia utilities told me so.


How do I find out what is driving my graphics card?

[Snowhog]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

If you check System > Additional drivers does it show an nVidia driver available for use?

[Telengard]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

System > Additional drivers

That doesn't seem to exist on my system. I found something called Hardware Drivers. I launched it. It searched for a short time and reported no proprietary drivers.

[Telengard]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

I tried clicking resume compositing and then apply, but nothing happened. There was no indication that I had clicked anything at all.

I created a new user account and logged in with it. No transparency was evident on the desktop so I went into system settings -> desktop effects. The box for enable desktop effects was unchecked (clear). I checkmarked it and clicked the compositing button. An error message appeared and told me to check my X configuration. It was not at all clear from the message what I'm supposed to be checking, especially because I don't even have an xorg.conf file.

I also investigated the documentation for the desktop effects applet in help. Pretty sparse, not much info there.

Snowhog, you mentioned the theme, but I can't even find where to change that. It seems like every part of KDE4 has its own theme settings now, but there isn't a unified tool where I can just set the theme for the whole desktop at once.

So what am I missing here?
[me=Telengard]goes off to mess with minecraft for a while[/me]

[Telengard]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

Here's the error message I get when I try to enable compositing desktop effects on the new user account.

[Snowhog]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

I had to rename /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get the GUI back after the upgrade. X wouldn't start with the old file in place.

I had been using the NVidia proprietary driver on Jaunty. I'm not at all certain what is driving my graphics card since the upgrade, but it definitely isn't NVidia's driver.

So you were using the NVidia proprietary driver before the upgrade. An xorg.conf file has to exist for NVidia to utilize. As the old one didn't work after the upgrade, let's take a look at it. Those here using NVidia cards will surely be able to see what's wrong and what needs to be done to get you back into business.

[dibl]

Re: Taskbar no longer transparent after upgrade to Lucid. Compositing disabled?

First thing to try (at a tty console with kdm stopped) would be

sudo nvidia-xconfig

to let the driver write a new xorg.conf file. Then

sudo service kdm start

and see whether the new configuration will allow desktop effects with compositing.