Version: 4.6 (using KDE 4.6.0) OS: Linux Yesterday, after upgrading my OpenSuse 11.4 system to the waiting-to-install upgrade packages, amongst which there where the kernel 2.6.37.6 and the new nVidia driver v.270 After the necesary restart (due to the new kernel installed) I could not have a normal work session with KDE4. This is, though, a very strange situation: KDE seems to start OK (at least it gives me that sound event at KDE's starting up). But the splash screen doesn't dissapear from the screen, it remains on my monitor, with that progress bar at about 90-95% Even stranger, and frustrating is the fact that the KDE seems to be working OK, except it doesn't shows me the normal desktop, but that darn splash-screen. I tried to launch some applications through ALT-F2 : I blindly wrote kcalc, and after that repeated to launch krename ... and they launch up OK, since I checked at the console login and they are launched in the memory. This really is very frustrating. The only workaround was: to UNINSTALL the nvidia packages, reboot the system, login to KDE, getting into "Personal settings" and un-check DESKTOP EFFECTS, and then install again the nvidia packages, reboot again and now ... I can login again normally. So ... it seems that this new driver from nVidia is another part of the nVidia driver hell, and not anymore compatible with 3D desktop effects. Does anyone know anything else on this ? I could live OK without those 3D effects, but still ... I can't stand this line of behaviour from nVidia (v.260 worked OK, and now v.270 doesn't ! -- and this comes just after another hell in those last days of Opensuse 11.3, with the same v.260 .. see bug #251719) By the way, with the same driver, I could login as expected into Gnome, XFCE ! Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: install the new nvidia v.270 driver from OpenSuse repository (or upgrade to this version from the existing v.260 driver) Actual Results: after the install + reboot, you can no longer normally login and work with KDE4, if the desktop effects are "active" Expected Results: you should login and work as normal Gnome (2.9) and XFCE are not affected by this problem
Does the problem persist if you disable desktop effects?
> un-check DESKTOP EFFECTS He said no (in this pretty talkie rant ;-) @Cornel a) you can toggle effects using SHIFT+Alt+F12 b) just disabling the "login" effect plugin will likely workaround your issue. (run "kcmshell kwincompositing", activate second tab) c) can you please try whether this happens with the xrender backend as well (3rd tab, oc. you'll have to re-enable the effect for the text =) d) Do you use vsync'ing or flipping in "nvidia-settings"?
@Thomas .. sorry for my late reply ... I'll take it one at a time: a) I didn't remembered this shortcut back then when testing before my bug report, but ... b) this alone didn't helped anything: I activated again the desktop effects, while un-checking this particular effect (login) and ... when clicking the Apply button, my screen just froze with the last windows opened; and, of course, from now on things happened again like in my first post d) flipping was (indeed) set to ON -- I switched it to Off, but this didn't seemed to help anything c) changing the composition type from OpenGL to xrender, was, indeed, some step in the right direction (to use nVidia's new driver, AND desktop effects), but still ... the composition manager keep complaining that some effects that were ON didn't work anymore (like: "blur", "desktop cube", "desktop cube animation", "sharpen", "wobly windows" a.s.o.). And, the overall impression is that "xrender" doesn't do the same good job in managing things on my desktop (I seem to experience some slowness in opening menus, for instance, menus all over the place, from those coming up when clicking the Application launcher, to those in any application...). For now I'm back to the configuration that works: Nvidia's new driver (270.41) AND desktop effects set to OFF
"the composition manager keep complaining" - that's normal. XRender doesn't provide 4x4 matrix transformations ("depth" in z-axis, only "glOrtho" correspondent), neither post raster operations ("shaders") nor arbitrary vertex transformation. -> Basically the OpenGL backend causes screenupdate lacks. Thing to do next: identify the culprit part. ------------------ a) disable /all/ effect plugins but keep keep (GL) compositing, check whether the issue remains. If not, re-enable them one by one until your screen stops updating. b) if the above didn't work (or you just wanna pre-check ;-) enter the "advanced" tab, disable v'sync & direct rendering. I assume you're using "Texture from Pixmap" (default) to generate textures? -> call back. (could even be an aspect in the nvidia-settings or xorg.conf configuration)
a) Did that. Unfortunatelly, when clicking Apply, screen froze again in the same manner like before... For the record, these were the effects I had turned ON: Sharpen Blur Dashboard Highlight window Login Logout Minimize Animation Scale in Shadow Sliding popups Translucency Taskbar thumbnails Wobbly windows Startup feedback Dialog parent Din inactive Dim screen for Administrator Mode Box switch Desktop Cube Desktop Cube Animation Present windows I turned them ALL off, and ... screen froze as before. b) when I un-check these 2 options (yes, I do have Texture from pixmaps selected as an opengl mode), and do Apply, I get this error message: "Failed to activate desktop effects using the given configuration options. Settings will be revert to the previous values.[...]" And indeed, the manager revert those settings to ON. There is though a way to set these to OFF: I login to XFCE, launch the KDE Preferences manager, set these to off. And now I CAN login to KDE, but .... when I try activating any effect (from the list above), I only get that complaining about not being compatible ... and the effect is not working, of course (Translucency for instance...) More of that... after the screensaver launched (when PC stayed idle for 5 min.), and I tried to get back to the desktop, it wasn't accessible anymore (just a black screen, and not even the mouse worked anymore) ! This is strange (or not ?). I think I should mention something else: I am now upgraded to the stable Gnome 3 packages (from the gnome3 repository) and the Gnome 3 is not working anymore with the new Nvidia 270 driver ! I just displays that default background image (that blue-stripped image), and that menu bar in the top margin of the screen, but nothing else is working (clicking on any option doesn't do anything !) A bit strange is that Gnome 3 works, actually, with the nouveau driver (first time it said something about the driver not being fully compatible to Gnome 3, but still, there is a working environment (with the up menu looking somehow like gnome 2.3, but anyway it is working). With Nvidia's driver, it doesn't work at all ! Could it be also some origin of the problem (this upgrade to Gnome 3 final) ? Only XFCE and Enlightment are working OK... Could it be that my nvidia based card (with a GeForce 7300 chip) is not capable of fully working with this driver ? (and the problems are revealed when desktop effects are activated ?) The system is pretty old either (with a Pentium D/2,8 GHz -- not even a common dual core one - it's the last generation of Intel CPU's before the dual core generation -- it does have 2 cores, though) ... but this didn't stopped it to work OK with the nvidia 260 driver that was previous available for Opensuse 11.4 ... Is there some program that I could use to test my card's openGL compatibility in full ? (besides testing some openGL game in OpenSUSE .. which I'm not very eager to do)
The 270.x driverr shows a serious drawback regarding ARGB windows (here, at least) Usually this should affect few clients, but does affect plasma panels (as well as krunner) and due to what's likely a bug in gdk /all/ (Qt) clients when you're running sth. like cairo-dock. The fact that you observe more or less the very same issue (some kind of halt - whether it impacts the kernel from Gnome3 is uncertain) makes this quite an upstream bug. You should simply downgrade the driver. Recent changes seem to be mostly focused on CUDA and VDPAU and thus don't affect your system. Gnome 3 looking like Gnome 2 on the nouveau driver sounds like you don't have nouveau-dri (that is the unstable 3D support for the driver) installed and it's therefore falling back to legacy mode (which is visually related, but functionally completely different and pretty much Gnome 2) The very basic OpenGL functionality test is "glxgears", also several xscreensaver/rss hacks use OpenGL (from basic to "quite-some") Now on a more KDE related part of the bug: the inability to activate compositing w/o v'sync or dri - can you confirm that compositing is activated at all when you disable them from outside (xfce), eg. windows have shadows, can be made translucent by alt+mousewheel, etc. - can you suspend/resume compositing (shift+alt+f12 twice) - the screensaver thing sounds like an issue when re-redirecting a window. you can test this by setting any window (eg. browser) to fullscreen mode and attempt to leave the mode (be prepared for the locked desktop), then uncheck "suspend desktop effects for fullscreen windows" in the advanced tab of "kcmshell4 kwincompositing" and try the same - there'll -likely- be no such visual halt anymore.
There's some very strange things happening :-)) I mean: after I activated again the desktop effects, and it complained about not being able to "work" with "direct rendering" and "vsync" set to OFF, and the corresponding freeze of the screen, I tried to toggle desktop effects on/off with ALT-SHIFT-F12 and ... it started to work again. Letting Firefox to full-screen, and then back to normal deosn't freeze anymore ! More of that: some effects are starting to work now !!! For instance translucency: it works normally now. Same with: wobbly windows, desktop cube, desktop cube animation, shadow, minimize app, dim inactive, dim screen for admin mode -- that's what I tested so far. Other effects activate, but they do not work: Sharpen, if activated makes kwin to crash. Also, "taskbar thumbnail", it activates, but when hovering any item in taskbar, kwin crashes. No big deal anyway But ... now I'm very much confused because I don't get it how things arranged to work now ! All it took was to ALT-SHIFT-F12 when the screen was on freeze. The working configuration is now: NVidia 270 + desktop effects activated, but... "enable direct rendering" = OFF and VSync = OFF. And "Allow flipping" = OFF under NVidia driver settings... These all settings remained OK after several computer restarts.
Feeling brave enough to try re-enabling one of them to narrow down the culprit setting?
Well ... a bit luck is good, isn't it ? after a login to XFCE, and launch of Personal (KDE) Settings from there, and setting "Direct rendering" = ON ... when I try to login to KDE, I get the usual (?) freeze. I suspend desktop effects (ALT-SHIFT-F12) and things are working again; I reenable desktop effects (either by ALT-SHIFT-F12 again, or directly from the "kcmshell4 kwincompositing" window, I got a freeze again... Well .. could we state, then, that the culprit here is this setting ? (Direct rendering = ON) If I enable "Vsync" there is no freeze... Now I have set : - Direct rendering = OFF - Vsync = ON and, in the NVidia XServer settings, Flipping = ON And things are running well. Of course, some particular desktop effects will not work, but I'm not that maniac about them, so this is no problem.
From all I get in this report this is unfortunately an nvidia issue and there is nothing we can do about it -> UPSTREAM