[i945GME] KDE Desktop effects not active by default

Plasma netbook is pretty broken without compositing and this affect Intel 945gme which is a very common on netbooks.

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2010/09/driver-dilemma-in-kde-workspaces-4-5/ is relevant.

Once effects are activated manually, with the current mesa the display suffers from flashes and incomplete painting and is not particularly usable. This was not a problem up through the 4.5 rc.

I tested with a snapshot of the upcoming mesa and it was much smoother, but still failed with large area blurs. In normal use this mostly affects the wifi connect dialog for plasma-widget-networkmanagement.

I have this problems also with "Intel 965GM (X3100)". I can enable effects manually, but they are hardly usable. Even when blur is disabled, it is slow and it flickers when redrawing panel and whole desktop (changing virtual desktop, present windows, desktop grid effects are affected).

Btw. I have also problems with kwin configuration freezes mentioned in blog. For example, when I try to disable blur effect, in moment I hit "apply", screen freezes but desktop works -> cursor is animated, and i can use krunner to blindly relog :p

I have a similar problem.
The composition on my machine is disabled by default,
and I'm not even able to turn it on via systemsettings.
My graphics card is an Ati Radeon HD 4350 (RV710).
If you want some more information about my system I will be happy to collaborate.

Fixed for me with the mesa update and configuration changes proposed in Bug #631413.

@ koso: You'd probably be better off following Bug #630580 since that is also an i965 system.

@ Albert: Please file a new bug since you have a different kind of graphics system.

Just to help me keep track, this is a Dell Mini 10v.

We believe this bug is fixed by this package, if it is not please reopen this bug.

mesa (7.9~git20100909-0ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  [ Robert Hooker ]
  * New upstream git snapshot up to commit 94118fe2d4b1e5 (LP: #631413)
  * New features include ATI HD5xxx series support in r600, and a vastly
    improved glsl compiler.
  * Remove pre-generated .pc's, use the ones generated at build time
    instead.
  * Remove all references to mesa-utils now that its no longer shipped
    with the mesa source.
  * Disable the experimental ARB_fragment_shader option by default on
    i915, it exposes incomplete functionality that breaks KDE compositing
    among other things. It can be enabled via driconf still. (LP: #628930).

  [ Christopher James Halse Rogers ]
  * debian/patches/04_osmesa_version.diff:
    - Refresh for new upstream
  * Bugs fixed in this release:
    - Fixes severe rendering corruption in Unity on radeon (LP: #628727,
      LP: #596292, LP: #599741, LP: #630315, LP: #613694, LP: #599741).
    - Also fixes rendering in gnome-shell (LP: #578619).
    - Flickering in OpenGL apps on radeon (LP: #626943, LP: #610541).
    - Provides preliminary support for new intel chips (LP: #601052).
  * debian/rules:
    - Update configure flags to match upstream reshuffling.
    - Explicitly remove gallium DRI drivers that we don't want to ship.
  * Update debian/gbp.conf for this Maverick-specific packaging
  * libegl1-mesa-dri-x11,kms: There are no longer separate kms or x11 drivers
    for EGL, libegl1-mesa-drivers now contains a single driver that provides
    both backends.

Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:55:40 -0400
Changed-By: Robert Hooker <robert.hooker at canonical.com>
Maintainer: Ubuntu X-SWAT <ubuntu-x at lists.ubuntu.com>
Signed-By: Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/mesa/7.9~git20100909-0ubuntu1

Maybe because fix released remove this issue from release notes?

It's fix released in mesa, not in kdebase-workspace. I've got a note yet to
write on this.

Proposed release note:

In many cases desktop effects are not active by default or on login in Kubuntu even for systems with video systems that support the current default effects well. These can be manually enabled in SystemSettings -> Desktop Effects, but in order to continue to have effects enabled on login, it is necessary to disable hardware checks in the advanced tab of desktop effect settings. Before bypassing these check, do verify that your system is working correctly with effects enabled.

Added to draft release notes.

I'm dropping the mesa patch which hid the ARB_fragment_shader support by default for the i915 driver in the 7.10 upload as there are lots of upstream fixes in the new release and this support might now be safe.

Marking the mesa bug back to Incomplete pending testing. If this is found to still be a problem with 7.10 we can re-enable the workaround.

Hey Scott,

Thanks for testing maverick during its development period. Unfortunately it looks like this bug report didn't get attention during the maverick development period. But I see there's not been more comments on the bug since the release, which makes me wonder if this is still an issue for you?

If you've not seen this issue since maverick's release yourself, it may have been solved by kernel or X or other updates that occurred late in the release; if so, would you mind please closing the bug for us? Go to the URL mentioned in this bug report, click the yellow icon(s) in the status column and set to 'Fix Released'.

If you no longer have the hardware needed to reproduce the problem, or otherwise feel the bug no longer needs tracked in Launchpad, you can set the status to 'Invalid'.

If you are the original reporter and still have this issue, just reply to this email saying so. (Or set the bug status to Confirmed.) If you are able to re-test this against 11.04 Natty Narwhal (our current development focus) and find the issue still affects Natty, please also run 'apport-collect <bug-number>' while running natty, which will add fresh logs and debug data, and flag it for the Ubuntu-X development team to look at.

Fixed in Natty.

This bug affects Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Maverick has reached end-of-life and is no longer supported, so I am closing the bug task for Maverick. Please upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu.
More information here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2012-April/000158.html