Unity panel always displayed on top of fullscreen windows

[beccatoria]

Not sure if this is useful, but mark me as another person experiencing this glitch under Gnome Classic + Compiz that got it fixed by turning of "place window". I know that's not helping with Unity + Compiz, but I figure it's data for those of us with Classic?

Hope a fix is released for you soon, OP!

[quequotion]

Hope a fix is released for you soon, OP!

Please, call me quequotion, or QQ or que or whatever, but "OP" just doesn't feel right outside of 4chan.

I'm hoping the issue will be worked out soon; but it seems the problem is difficult to resolve.

Supposedly, a fix has been released for Quantal and will be backported to Precise eventually.

Ambitious as I am, I took it upon myself to install Quantal's Unity and Compiz in Precise.

At first, this did not go well as the proposed fix resulted in another, even more frustrating glitch.
Fortunately, the new glitch was tracked down and stamped out rather quickly.
Unfortunately, at no time did I ever see any improvement in Unity's behavior.

The panel is still displayed on top of all full-screen applications in Unity 6.0.

Whether that is because I have installed Unity 6.0 in Precise, or because the bug is not fixed, remains to be seen.

[ahgblopes]

Just turn off place windows in CCSM. Fixed this and other bugs for me.

I'm running Unity on GENTOO, and it works for me!!! also, various bugs were corrected with this!!! thank you very much!!!

[quequotion]

Another round of screenshots.

All of these screenshots show one thing:

Unity's panel is always visible.

It doesn't seem to matter what is going on, whether there's a full-screen app, a screensaver, or when the desktop cube is in mid-rotation.

In any test case I can test, when using unity with the desktop cube, the panel is always visible.

I've also attached these to a new bug report.

Interest in the issue seems to have waned.

[ksanger]

Found you wrong today. Logged into my computer to find Firefox occupying the whole screen with no file menu bar nor system items. Hit F11 to get a file menu and close firefox. Then found no unity icons nor system icons just a background. Luckily rebooting gave me unity icons and system items back but it would be nice to know how and whey they disappeared and how to get them back.

[quequotion]

Found you wrong today. Logged into my computer to find Firefox occupying the whole screen with no file menu bar nor system items. Hit F11 to get a file menu and close firefox. Then found no unity icons nor system icons just a background. Luckily rebooting gave me unity icons and system items back but it would be nice to know how and whey they disappeared and how to get them back.

That's interesting.

Sounds like unity crashed; this happens to me from time to time as well.
Usually I have that kind of problem after changing settings in CCSM, but it's happened at boot in the past.

Normally, when you have firefox in full-screen (F11), are the menubar, system icons, etc visible? Don't they get in the way of the search and address boxes?

Do you use unity with a Desktop Wall or a Desktop Cube?

Desktop Wall seems to be fixed, but Desktop Cube has a deeper problem I think.

[ksanger]

Tried Firefox in full screen mode, F11. Menu bar and system icons do not show up. Neither do the Unity quick launch icons. Hitting F11 again brought them back. (This time).

I have no idea what desktop wall or desktop cube is. I assume I have a wall. I just installed the normal distro from a copy burned to cd.

I have been logged in for well over 1 week. Note I've never left my systems on like this before. I used to power down after every use. Is it normal to have to reboot Ubuntu occasionally like Windows?

[firekage]

I will add few words myself. I have two instances of Ubuntu:

-the one is from upgraded 11.10 to 12.04
-the second one is a clean installation of 12.04

I have the same bug/problem with visible Unity panel with full-screen apps ( i don't write about maximized apps but full-screen apps) with upgraded 11.10 to 12.04 but on a fresh install with 12.04 i don't have this bug and it has not occured yet. I have 3d Unity, i have cube enabled with 3d "effects" (like water rain, deformations and so on).

Still don't know why on upgraded version it occurs while on clean install it doesen't not. As a matter of fact in my case this is true rather for using players like movie players because when i have full-screened firefox than it is under the panel but i can use panel while when i have full-screened movie players, and im watching something than panel is visible, not usuable, i can't click at anything on it.

[quequotion]

I have no idea what desktop wall or desktop cube is. I assume I have a wall. I just installed the normal distro from a copy burned to cd.

You assume correctly. The wall is default.

Unrelated/Unimportant background information:
The cube used to be the quintessential component of compiz, until Canonical got their hands on it and stripped it of all but the most mundane features.
The cube renders multiple desktops as sides of a three-dimensional shape, so you can have windows open on each side and rotate around to see them (or see them all at once if your cube is transparent, while being able to focus on the side in front of you).
The wall renders multiple desktops as one big flat surface, so you can have windows scattered all over it and slide around to see them; it is a generally inferior and less interesting design, but supposedly easier to understand and it gets lots of points from hardcore anti-eyecandy people.

Is it normal to have to reboot Ubuntu occasionally like Windows?

That's a good question.

Theoretically no, since it is GNU/Linux and should never have to fully reboot unless you've updated the kernel. There are a lot of ways to get around having to reboot in GNU/Linux, which is one reason network administrators like it (reboots cost time, and therefore money). If you know the tricks you only have to reboot very rarely.

However, in practice, Ubuntu gets rebooted almost as much as windows. Partly this is because some windows refugees are trying to use Ubuntu just like they used windows, and partly because all the intricate tricks to avoid having to fully reboot are well... intricate, mostly involving terminal commands and fixing text configuration files using as the super-user which is risky if you make a mistake.

Here's an example:
One day your desktop just stops; freezes.
Maybe you can still move the mouse, maybe you can't.

Options:

1. Open another tty:

[ctrl]+[alt]+[f1~6]

The screen will be black except for some text asking you to login. This is the same username and password you usually log in with. Note that you will not be able to see your password as you type it, not even as asterisks.

Once logged in, you can check if some process is using too much cpu with:

top

Quit top by pressing [q].

Terminate a misbehaving process with:

killall processname

There are other, more intricate, ways to kill a process if killall doesn't work.

Return to your, hopefully unfrozen, desktop at tty7:

[ctrl]+[alt]+[f7]

2. That didn't work. Opening a tty worked, but the bad process won't die or the desktop wasn't there at tty7.
Go back to another tty1~6. You will still be logged in at the one you used before.

You can restart the entire desktop session without having to reboot:

sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm restart

This will close all windows and take you back to the usual graphical login screen. You might lose some data if you hadn't saved before the freeze, but this should get you back on your feet faster than a reboot.

3. That didn't work; maybe none of the ttys will open. This is not good, but not necessarily the worst case scenario.
There are two last-ditch key combinations.

The key combination to restart X (the GUI) is disabled by default, but its:

[ctrl]+[alt]+[backspace]

This has some quirky results, but if you really don't want to reboot it may help.

The "magic keys"

[alt]+[SysRq]+[r],[e],[i],[s],[u],[b]

Hold [alt]+[SysRq] and press each letter once, slowly, in sequence. This will reboot your system, but it's a soft reboot. The system should shutdown smoothly. This also gives applications a chance to write to disk before being killed, unmounts drives, etc. and is much less risky than hitting the switch.

4. That didn't work; maybe the kernel is locked up, and that's bad, and now you have to hit the switch.

5. Actually, there are probably a dozen other ways to get out of a frozen desktop without rebooting, but they are too intricate for me.

This post is completely off topic, but it looks like it's unlikely that I will ever see full-screen windows in Ubuntu with the Compiz Cube that aren't obstructed by the unity panel.

[quequotion]

As a matter of fact in my case this is true rather for using players like movie players because when i have full-screened firefox than it is under the panel but i can use panel while when i have full-screened movie players, and im watching something than panel is visible, not usuable, i can't click at anything on it.

This sentence is difficult to understand, but I think you mean:

"As a matter of fact, in my case this is true rather for using players--like movie players--because when i have full-screened firefox then it is under the panel, but i can still use the panel; while when i have full-screened movie players and i'm watching something, then the panel is visible but not usable--i can't click at anything on it."

How did you full-screen firefox? Did you press [F11]?

Sounds like you have the same issue as me on your upgraded installation.

I also had this issue after upgrading my previous computer to 12.04 and again after starting over on a new computer with a fresh install of 12.04.

I wonder why yours didn't develop the problem with a fresh install.

Are the compiz configurations of your two computers different at all?

Can you post them?

--how to do that:
1. In ccsm, click "Preferences"
2. On the "Profile & Backend" panel, under "Profile" there are some buttons.
3. Click "Export" and save the file somewhere.
I recommend upgraded.txt and freshinstall.txt for filenames.
4. Attach those txt files to a reply here