[Solved] Strange lines and colors before window appears

[dabayman]

I have this strange issue where I get these weird lines and colors behind windows as they a loading, only lasts about a split second, but it's very annoying. This happens about 90% of the times I open windows, but also doesn't seem to have any coherent pattern. I'm running 8.10. Graphics card seems to be irrelevant seeming it occurs on my friends computer, with a totally different graphics card. Oh, seems it happens with open office word processor most frequent and lasts longer each time.

[Snowhog]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Happens on my Toshiba Satellite P105-S6147 laptop (Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)). Minor annoyance, but does not affect actual operation/performance.

[dabayman]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

You actually just hit the nail on the head. Thats my exact intel chipset. Coincidence? I actually think it might be, because as i mentioned, it happens on my friends laptop with a nvidia graphics card? Interesting.

[Nate]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Has anyone seen this in the latest 4.2 Release Candidate? I can't get it to reproduce anymore, though I certainly experienced it prior.

[sophmf]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Same problem, see this topic
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...5540#msg165540

My laptop is Toshiba Satellite A300 1BU with Mobility Radeon HD 3400

[The Liquidator]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Same here - Dell 630m laptop with intel 915 graphics, although I get flickering.

It seems to primarily apply to the intel integrated Graphics card family. It is particularly noticeable when I run a wine application, also when I do so from within another desktop so think it is an xorg issue. Whether it is happening solely to ubuntu users I know not.

[Qqmike]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Same.
Intel 915 integrated graphics.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Have you tried your machine with another distro Mike?

[Zorael]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

See this KDE bug and this launchpad entry.

[Qqmike]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

@Liquidator -- No, I haven't tried another distro lately (not for 2 years). What are you thinking?

[The Liquidator]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

This problem only arose with 8.10 - Hardy is unaffected by it. 8.10 introduced 2 big milestones - KDE 4, together with a new xorg. It is difficult to pin-point at first whether it's a KDE 4 issue, an Xorg issue or ubuntu's implementation of either. The fact that it also happened to me when running gnome would support the view that it's xorg. Also the fact that I can no longer run screensavers properly would support that . Whose responsibility it is to fix, I wouldn't know, which is why I wondered whether anyone else with the same chipset had experience of running any other distro with the same software versions. If everyone has the same problem, whatever the distro, then I presume it is xorg with some work to do..

[Qqmike]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Thanks for the explanation.

[Nate]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Are any of you running the 4.2 RC which was just released yesterday?

[The Liquidator]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

Yes I got it last night, but haven't noticed any changes in the flicker.

[Zorael]

Re: Strange lines and colors before window appears

This seems to be an X quirk caused by a Fedora patch, that Gnome (and recent Nvidia drivers) simply works around. KDE4 doesn't, and we get video garbage. The X package in question (xserver-xorg-core) available from the Ubuntu repositories has said patch enabled, whereas Fedora and other distros have it disabled. Supposedly it's a performance hack, and whatwith Gnome (and KDE3) having worked around the garbage showing, its side-effects are only now becoming apparent.

So either KDE4 has to work around it as well, or the Ubuntu packagers have to stop applying the patch when compiling X.

So one workaround is to install an unpatched xserver-xorg-core. Compilation instructions are listed over at the KDE bugtracker entry I linked towards earlier. Of course, if you don't want to compile it yourself, you could add a ppa (like mine: https://launchpad.net/~zorael/+archive) to get it automatically installed as an update.