Compiz - stops, CPU usage, crashes?

[Karl Auer]

Well, I've been using 13.10 with Compiz on NVidia hardware for a week or
two now, and from an interface point of view I'm actually very happy
with it. It has only one flaw in that regard - no easy way to move
windows between workspaces. The easiest way is on the "wall", but it's
still clunky.

Of more concern is that compiz regularly (at least once a day) does one
of these things:

- starts to use massive amounts of CPU. The only way I've found to
resolve this is to close everything, move to a text console, kill
compiz, then restart lightdm.

- stops dead for no reason, usually when windows are spread. The mouse
moves, then freezes for a few seconds, then moves again etc. Sometimes
this is resolved by flicking away to a text console and back. If that
doesn't work, I have to kill compiz and restart lightdm. This can mean
lost work.

"compiz --replace --display :0" helps sometimes, but mostly not. Usually
it fails to replace the running compiz, and just stops, and needs to be
manually killed. If it does manage to replace the running compiz, it
will have the same problem - stopped or using too much CPU. 

My question is, is this normal? Is compiz well known to be this
buggy/unreliable? If so, I'll have to change interfaces again. I don't
use compiz for the eye candy, I use it because it makes Unity very
usable (it's unusable in its default state). But if it is going to
require a restart two or three times a day, I'll have to move on...

The extensions I'm using are the desk cube, rotating cube, and expo.
 
Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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