Unity panel always displayed on top of fullscreen windows

[Ubun2to]

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.

I prefer to shut my network down every night, as I lost $300 worth of networking equipment due to a lightning strike, and I don't plan on losing it again. I was offline for about a week.

[firekage]

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."

Yes, that's right. I was in hurry and didn't see that it was hard to read and understand. Sorry.

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

I did it again and you're right. As soon as i full-screened firefox by F11 than Unity panel is not usuable, not clickable but visible. So, in other words, it happens with all apps on full-screen.

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

Yes, but only on one machine.

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.

There is only one difference:

-11.10>12.04 uses gdm
-12.04 on fresh install uses lightdm

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

I will check it again.

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

I will do this but in my case with exporting and importing profiles in ccsm happens something bad - while i click on import than everything freezez, ican move window but it looks like Ubuntu/Unity/gui doesen't respond and i have to kill X. With importing the same thing happens.

[quequotion]

Good news / Bad news

Good news:
I tracked down the cause on my computer.
Whenver I have the cube enabled and transparent, Unity will be stuck on top of everything.
If the cube is set to 100% opacity, things work as expected.

Bad news:
This may only work for me, as it seems several different configurations of compiz bring out the error. Also, I don't want to go without a transparent cube.

Good news:
The developers recognize and continue to work on the problem.
I've been talking to people on IRC who were very supportive.

Bad news:
It looks like we're down to edge cases with unspecified causes, which are rather difficult bugs to fix.

[quequotion]

I will do this but in my case with exporting and importing profiles in ccsm happens something bad - while i click on import than everything freezez, ican move window but it looks like Ubuntu/Unity/gui doesen't respond and i have to kill X. With importing the same thing happens.

That's strange. You shouldn't have to click "import" for anything, just "export".
It shouldn't damage your configuration, but then compiz and ccsm are a little unpredictable.

[firekage]

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

I checked it again. Few words at the end of quotation.

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

I did it but because of what i have to say at the end of this quotations there is no need for it.

Good news / Bad news

Good news:
I tracked down the cause on my computer.
Whenver I have the cube enabled and transparent, Unity will be stuck on top of everything.
If the cube is set to 100% opacity, things work as expected.

Bad news:
This may only work for me, as it seems several different configurations of compiz bring out the error. Also, I don't want to go without a transparent cube.

Good news:
The developers recognize and continue to work on the problem.
I've been talking to people on IRC who were very supportive.

Bad news:
It looks like we're down to edge cases with unspecified causes, which are rather difficult bugs to fix.

I have to agree with you in 100%. I checked it again and what you said is true for me too. If i set cube to 100% opacity then panel at the top disappears when apps are fullscreened, but if i have, for an example, 95% opacity than panel at the bottom is still present when apps are fullscreened.

I was wrong earlier, had time and checked it - you're right. It is true for ma also on 12.04 fresh installation, and with upgrades too.

[ray field]

Good news / Bad news

Good news:
I tracked down the cause on my computer.
Whenver I have the cube enabled and transparent, Unity will be stuck on top of everything.
If the cube is set to 100% opacity, things work as expected.

Bad news:
This may only work for me, as it seems several different configurations of compiz bring out the error. Also, I don't want to go without a transparent cube.

Good news:
The developers recognize and continue to work on the problem.
I've been talking to people on IRC who were very supportive.

Bad news:
It looks like we're down to edge cases with unspecified causes, which are rather difficult bugs to fix.

thankful I came across this thread -- turning off the cube transparency fixed the panel showing up fullscreen (for me it was most annoying in dosemu, and playing video). as a side benefit, compiz seems to use much less CPU.

is there a sense this only affects systems with Nvidia cards?

is compiz the way of the future? since I'm just an enduser I am just grateful for what I get -- compiz gives me a lot, but the persistence of bugs like this one and the "flashing previous desktop" one just make me wonder if there is uncertainty about whether to just ditch compiz in favor of something else.

[firekage]

In my opinion, in fact, whatever you choose, it won't be without issues, problems, bugs. I have KDE on Slackware - had many problems with it...

[quequotion]

I have to agree with you in 100%. I checked it again and what you said is true for me too. If i set cube to 100% opacity then panel at the top disappears when apps are fullscreened, but if i have, for an example, 95% opacity than panel at the bottom is still present when apps are fullscreened.

thankful I came across this thread -- turning off the cube transparency fixed the panel showing up fullscreen

Three people with the same problem and the same workaround?
That has to be the most consistency since the beginning of this thread.

is there a sense this only affects systems with Nvidia cards?

Good question. I don't think so, but I'm no expert.
The bug reports so far haven't connected to a certain driver or card; one developer explicitly said the rendering problem is not relevant to the driver.
However, one can never be completely certain when faced with unpredictable behavior.

Properly answering your question requires (at least) the following tests:
Run compiz with the nvidia card and the nouveau drivers.
Run compiz with the nvidia card and the proprietary drivers.
Run compiz with a different GPU in the same machine.

Developers and users alike tend to distrust the proprietary drivers, but I find seven out of ten times this is based on hearsay, two out of ten on misconfiguration, and one out of ten on an actual bug (which Nvidia will eventually get around to fixing).
In this case I doubt it's connected with the card or the drivers since it hadn't come up yet and the issue seems tied to compiz's configuration.

is compiz the way of the future? since I'm just an enduser I am just grateful for what I get -- compiz gives me a lot, but the persistence of bugs like this one and the "flashing previous desktop" one just make me wonder if there is uncertainty about whether to just ditch compiz in favor of something else.

The "flashing previous desktop" bug really has been fixed, although that fix is not officially available for Precise.
One of the developers set up a temporary PPA for Precise here, but this version of compiz, 0.9.7.8-0ubuntu1, is "out of date" (0.9.7.8-0ubuntu1.4 is current for Precise), so installing requires an override.
The fix is not included in newer versions of compiz until 0.9.8 (available for Quantal).
Someday, there will be an SRU for Precise that will include this fix and others...
In the mean time, I have installed compiz from Quantal on my system.

I certainly hope that compiz is the future, because it has a lot of potential, but I'm very worried about the direction it's taking since Canonical has (in effect) taken over.
"The plan" as it were, is that future versions of Ubuntu will use Wayland and Compiz for rendering and composting, for which purpose all X11 dependencies of Compiz will be bound to a separate plugin for use on other, non-wayland, platforms. Wayland's official inclusion in Ubuntu continues to be postponed.

During the compiz 0.8.x era, there were some innovative plugins like headtracking, affine, stackswitch, window rotation, compiz screensaver, etc... all of which are pretty much forgotten now. Those and more are still available from the mostly abandoned git repository (development is entirely in launchpad bzr now), but it's not likely that they are compatible with recent compiz.
Compiz 0.9.x is much lighter and more stable, but the Unity integration clashes with other desktops, the default configuration is rather unimpressive, and it lacks support for all the extras that made compiz "cool". In addition, since the compiz development community has all but shut down (wiki, website, and forums are all ghost towns now) several other platforms have (falsely) declared it dead and dropped it from their distributions.
In my opinion, compiz, and the community that make it awesome, deserve better.

[bogan]

Hi!, quequotion, Congratulations!

You will shortly make your century.

When you started this thread, you and I seemed to be the only ones who had this problem, and you had difficulty in finding anyone who would even recognize what you were talking about.

You don't seem to have that problem any longer, even if the original one still gives trouble.

Chao!, bogan.

[quequotion]

When you started this thread, you and I seemed to be the only ones who had this problem, and you had difficulty in finding anyone who would even recognize what you were talking about.

It seems like much longer ago than it actually was. Much progress has been made since we properly defined the issue. Thank you for your help and support.

Now that we've established some consistent behavior, I feel there's a stronger possibility that this bug will be fixed.