strange kwin(?) behavior on karmic cd

[Clay Weber]

On Tuesday 03 November 2009 03:54:58 pm pkaplan1 at comcast.net wrote:
> I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade (or do fresh install) a Thinkpad
>  T41 (ATI) graphics from Jaunty to Karmic.
> 
> 
> I've been running KDE 4.3.2 since it appeared in the repos a month ago and
>  haven't had any problems on Jaunty.
> 
> 
> However, on the live cd I'm having some real display problems....When kde
>  first launches the plasma panel is garbled. All of the buttons seem to be
>  active, but nothing is readable and there are a series of vertical lines
>  at various points on the panel. Krunner is also garbled. Although if I
>  guess where to click, it seems to accept input. Surprisingly if I activate
>  Desktop effects, all of the problems seem to clear up; everything appears
>  normal. If I inactivate Desktop effects, everything becomes garbled again.
> 
> 
> Although I like desktop effects, my machine has only 1 Mb RAM so sometimes
>  I have to turn them off. It would seem that there might be a problem
>  running karmic on this machine.
> 
> 
> Has anyone seen anything like this? Any thoughts on a config fix?
> 
> 
> TIA
> Paul
> 
It is a known issue, here is a link to the bug report (as well as it's many 
duplicates):
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-
ati/+bug/426582

I have the same bug, it popped up pretty late in karmic's development cycle.
I think we both have similar ati gpus (mobility 7500 here)

I saved my xorg.conf from jaunty, luckily as Karmic on a fresh install doesn't 
use one for me - not sure if it will be preserved in your case so backing it 
up is a good idea.

The options that work for me after the install give me an xorg.conf that looks 
like this:

Section "Device"
   Identifier   "Configured Video Device"
   Driver               "radeon"
   Option            "AccelMethod"    "XAA"  #XAA or EXA. "XAA" is the default 
   Option           "RenderAccel" "off"
   Option            "EnablePageFlip" "true" #only works with "XAA".
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier   "Default Screen"
   Monitor      "Configured Monitor"
   Device      "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
 
Selecting "EXA" will work ok for this issue, but it seems to have a definite 
performance hit on our lower-memory GPUs.  The other two options seem to fix 
the problem, and I have good performance (even using Kwin effects) on my Compaq 
Evo N610c  with only 1gb ram

-- 
Clay Weber
http://kubuntuforums.net
http://flyballmaine.com
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