Gnome 3 question

[smarmytime]

I don't know how much this actually relates to System76, so at this point, I'm just trying to ascertain if this is something that's unique to my experience right now, or a flaw in Gnome, or a bad install, whatever.

I was using Gnome 3 with 11.04, and, while I didn't completely love it, I liked it better than Unity. I still do, but Unity is improved with 11.10, so I stuck with it since installing 11.10 (fresh install), but this weekend I decided to give Gnome another try, so I installed the current version (3.2 something). Unfortunately, the experience so far has not been a good one - when I hit the superkey to take me to the screen that allows you to manage the virtual desktops that you have open, gives you access to the dock, etc (sorry if I'm a little light on technical terms), instead of being a nice, smooth transition, the screen turns into distorted lines that completely obscure any and all on screen images. This distortion lasts for about as long as the transition would last from the main screen view to the menu screen view.

So, is this more likely the result of a bug in the current gnome, or should I reinstall gnome? Or is there a chance that there is some GPU issue with the new gnome? Or could I simply have a bad install, and need to start from scratch?

BTW - I have a PanP7, with an i5, and 4 GB of RAM.

[isaacullah]

Smarmy, just out of curiosity, when you did your fresh install of 11.10 did you install 32 bit or 64 bit? I have the exact same configuration PanP7 as you, and did the 64 bit version of 11.10. I have not tried Gnome3 yet, but haven't noticed any of strangeness with workspace transition in Unity. I'm curious about whether or not you did 64 bit because, as you know, I am experiencing that frustrating mouse/trackpad bug, and if you did a fresh install of 11.10 64-bit, then we *should* have the same exact machine with the same exact OS, and so we *should* be having any of the same hardware issues. If, on the other hand, you did 32-bit, and have no problems, then I might try installing that version instead!

[smarmytime]

No, I'm using the 64 bit version...but I've had no transition oddities in Unity at all. I suppose I should have mentioned there has been another oddity since installing Gnome 3 - every now and then, whether I'm in Unity or Gnome, it won't shut down cleanly...it will freeze up on the closing Ubuntu splash screen, and that's only been happening since I installed Gnome. That would tend to make me think it's a Gnome-specific issue, whether it just needs to be reinstalled, or possibly an actual bug.

I have had the occasional bad system install, which is the only reason I asked about that...I've never had the issue that you've had, though (although I did mention in your thread a similar issue that I did have, that was easily dealt with). I can imagine that would be very frustrating.

[isaacullah]

Dang! I was hoping that that would be the thing that did it! It's strange that we are experiencing such different problems when we are using the exact same hardware with the exact same software! Very strange...

You know, one other problem that I am experiencing is that it sometimes takes a couple of minutes for the computer to fully come back after the display has gone to sleep. What I mean is that it comes "awake" with a jiggle of the mouse, but it lags quite a bit for a while, and it's difficult to even type. Then, the screen will go black, like it's going back to sleep, but only for a moment. When the screen comes back, it's fine (except for the perpetual mouse issue!).

Weird stuff!

[smarmytime]

That is a problem that I haven't dealt with since 10.10 - what does top say is using up your resources when that happens?

[isaacullah]

Alas, we will never know! As I was just posting in the other thread, I reverted back to my Clonezilla snapshot. IMO, there was just too much bugginess going on in 11.10 for me to stick it out. I had some high hopes for it too! Now I will have to wait for the next LTS before upgrading...:(

[isantop]

Had you installed the proprietary AMD drivers? Those are incompatible with Gnome 3 at the moment, and it sounds like that may have been you problem.

[smarmytime]

Heh...I have, and did not realize there was an incompatibility. Glad I checked this before doing something drastic, like a system reinstall.