Bug 261503

Summary: plasma does not become transparent when compositing is toggled.
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: Jesse Milette <linux.nerdy.kid>
Component: visualsAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: normal CC: adresatt, adundovi, asraniel, b7.10110111, coufal.tom, dg, dreamsoul14, igor.poboiko, mail, maximlevitsky, neikokz+kbugs, post, stephan.diestelhorst
Priority: NOR    
Version: 4.9.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Ubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: plasma panel before disable effects
plasma panel : effects are disabled
plasma panel after turning on effects (not transparent)
Non transparent widgets after restart become transparent

Description Jesse Milette 2010-12-29 00:32:09 UTC
Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.5.90) 
OS:                Linux

Kubuntu Maverick NVIDIA geforce 8600M with 260.19.29 drivers.

randomly plasma will not become transparent after toggling kwin compositing.  killing plasma-desktop and reruning it brings transparency back.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Comment 1 Jesse Milette 2011-01-08 14:13:02 UTC
I can confirm this.  Running Kubuntu Maverick KDE RC2 with NVIDIA 8600M with 260.19.29 drivers.
Comment 2 Jesse Milette 2011-01-08 17:50:25 UTC
ok I just saw that I confirmed my own bug, wow what an idiot lol
Comment 3 Elias Probst 2011-01-11 14:12:56 UTC
The same issue on:
KDE SC 4.6 RC2 (4.5.95)
Qt 4.7.1

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT
x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.14.0
Comment 4 Elias Probst 2011-01-11 14:14:58 UTC
The panels are only transparent for a moment when switching desktops and the slide-in/out effect is active or when showing the dashboard.

So it works in general just fine and it seems like this is just a bug in the code which handles, when a panel is transparent and when not and has probably nothing to do with the graphics drivers or Qt.
Comment 5 David Martí 2011-03-29 14:01:43 UTC
I can confirm it here.

KDE 4.6.1
Qt 4.7.2-5

xf86-video-intel 2.14.901-1 (Mesa DRI Intel(R) 965GME/GLE)
Comment 6 Andrej Dundovic 2011-04-03 15:47:26 UTC
The same bug here after updating from KDE 4.5.5 to 4.6.1.

Fedora 14 (kernel: 2.6.35.6-48.fc14.x86_64)
KDE: 4.6.1 (kdebase-4.6.1-3.fc14.x86_64)
Qt: 4.7.1 (qt-4.7.1-17.fc14.x86_64)

VGA:
* 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3600 Series
* xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.13.1-0.4.20100705git37b348059.fc14.x86_64 (2.1 Mesa 7.9)
* Mesa DRI R600 (RV635 9598) 20090101 TCL DRI2
Comment 7 Andrej Dundovic 2011-04-03 16:08:56 UTC
After turning off blur effect everything works fine (got same results switching to XRender, but with it I lose many desktop effects).

Found this tip here:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=884954
Comment 8 dreamsoul14 2011-05-13 18:26:07 UTC
Created attachment 59967 [details]
plasma panel before disable effects
Comment 9 dreamsoul14 2011-05-13 18:26:57 UTC
Created attachment 59968 [details]
plasma panel : effects are disabled
Comment 10 dreamsoul14 2011-05-13 18:28:01 UTC
Created attachment 59969 [details]
plasma panel after turning on effects (not transparent)
Comment 11 Anton 2011-05-13 19:40:52 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 12 Igor Poboiko 2011-05-14 16:47:44 UTC
Confirmed. BTW it looks like KWin bug and not a plasma one. AFAIK blur and transparency are driven by KWin.
Comment 13 dreamsoul14 2011-07-28 13:28:49 UTC
fixed in 4.7.0
Comment 14 Igor Poboiko 2011-07-28 18:20:54 UTC
Confirm. For me issue disappeared even in KDE SC 4.6.95 (aka 4.7.0 RC1). Closing this bug as resolved. Please feel free to reopen if it is still an issue for you.
Comment 15 Stephan Diestelhorst 2011-08-06 11:25:48 UTC
please reopen. This is still present with my system  (Kubuntu 11.4, KDE 4.7.0). Panel was not transparent after boot, but cycling once through Alt+F12 (effect off, and then on again) made it transparent. However, after cycling again, I cannot get it to become transparent once again. :-/

Systems an X120e, with fglrx 11.7 installed.
Comment 16 Igor Poboiko 2011-08-06 13:04:53 UTC
Okay then, reopening because of previous comment.
Comment 17 Sergey Malkin 2011-08-06 18:24:02 UTC
Arch Linux, KDE 4.7.0 - bug is still present for me too.
Comment 18 Stephan Diestelhorst 2011-08-08 15:42:27 UTC
It seems that toggling (was: off, then: on, then: off) the "Blur" effect in composing settings made the panel transparent again. Maybe a config file issue?
Comment 19 Stephan Diestelhorst 2011-08-08 18:46:26 UTC
Mhmhm, after adding external monitor: same thing again.
Switching effects off, then on (Alt + Shift F12) or toggling "Blur" effect don't help. However, killing plasma-desktop and then restarting does help.
(killall plasma-desktop; plasma-desktop)
Comment 20 Marco Martin 2012-06-25 14:52:25 UTC
*** Bug 283859 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 21 Tomas Coufal 2012-09-14 18:09:32 UTC
I'm noticing this problem on Archlinux with KDE 4.9.1 .

None of advices above work, only restarting plasma helps...
Comment 22 Tomas Coufal 2012-09-15 07:44:17 UTC
But now.. when I'm looking closer on it, I've found that it doesn't effect the panel  but only widgets (and after restarting plasma-desktop some of them will become transparent but some won't). And when I've restarted whole X server everything looks normal. I'm attaching an image where you can see it.
Comment 23 Tomas Coufal 2012-09-15 08:19:00 UTC
Created attachment 73922 [details]
Non transparent widgets after restart become transparent

So, this is the image I promised.

And I'll give you several examples of the behaviour:
- Icons-only widget- after restart partly transparent (running apps are, but launchers not)
- NetworkManager widget- after restart everything looks fine
- Alt-Tab switching between apps - only restarting X server helps me
Comment 24 Ralf Jung 2012-10-13 17:01:48 UTC
This has been marked as duplicate of https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=283859 with the comment
> even tough is the "opposite" is the same issue as this other bug: sometimes
> it doesn't nitice composite being enabled or disabled
I am however not sure if this is true: Indeed sometimes when I disable compositing, Plasma does not seem to notice. This can be seen, for example, by looking at the panel which has a dark black background and text is hardly legible. This is happening usually only the first time compositing is disabled after I log in.
If I toggle compositing more often, the panel behaves properly: A new background is loaded (in a lighter grey). However, the borders of the K-Menu, the notifications and so on are still broken. In fact I never saw them in an unbroken state unless compositing is turned off entirely (i.e., not automatically started when logging in). Is this really the same issue?
Comment 25 Ralf Jung 2013-03-10 19:31:16 UTC
Isn't this a duplicate of 179042?
Comment 26 Ruslan Kabatsayev 2013-03-10 19:36:54 UTC
(In reply to comment #25)
> Isn't this a duplicate of 179042?

Looks like it is...

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 179042 ***