Compiz - Is it really a crashoholic?

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi everyone, I would like to hear about your experiences with Compiz and how often it crashes on you. I’m not sure if it’s my choice of hardware, drivers, or if this is a trait with Compiz.

My Experience
I have an Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 (with the distribution’s proprietary drivers) and previously a GTX 650 (which overheated) so I have a record of using Nvidia and maximizing 3D performance with their drivers.

I’ve always liked animations and the features it provides (like smart window placement) but I seem to encountering random crashes at really odd points under Ubuntu MATE. Even a year ago with Unity, a full screen-able window would “fight” between windowed and full screen, leading Compiz (or Unity?) to crash and re-launch itself. I’d wait seconds, sometimes minutes for the desktop to become responsive again, otherwise I would have to enter a terminal to re-launch it.

In Ubuntu MATE, the crashes are much more often, and there’s one every time. Sometimes I was hovering over a minimized application (window preview), un-maximizing a window, even moving a window between workspaces or just using the desktop cube – something would trigger Compiz to crash completely. :open_mouth: Luckily, I fall back to Macro.

I would much prefer Compiz over Marco because of screen tearing issues (and the eye candy ;))

The logs just leave stack traces in /tmp, which I can’t quite figure out. If you’re interested, here’s 4 logs from earlier:

Since this is also my first post, I will take an opportunity to say to the developers – Thank you for Ubuntu MATE and congratulations with the official 15.04 release!

#2

I agree about Compiz being a bit crash-tastic. However, on the screen tearing front, I find that if I use Marco with compositing enabled, the screen tearing is more or less reduced to the same extent as when using Compiz. That’s my setup on the laptop I am writing this from.

#3

I’m not sure , but I think that at https://plus.google.com/communities/108331279007926658904/stream/92e8af48-54f6-4754-a4ad-5cde79f62a8a there are some video that will help you . How I don’t have NVidia , I’m not sure . I suggest a look there .

#4

I’ve never had Compiz crash on me, unless I was experimenting with settings and did something silly. That said, most of my hardware have Intel GPUs and my two nvidia systems do not have exotic cards.

#5

Thank you for the replies so far. It looks everyone’s experiences with Compiz entirely depends on the hardware it’s running on. Mine could be down to Nvidia’s driver – I heard Nvidia’s “black window bug” was actually a software bug in Compiz. Kudos to them for fixing it though! :+1:

I had a look, the review videos are more or less reviewing Ubuntu MATE as a whole, with the fancy effects enabled… which doesn’t crash for them, but might depend on their hardware.

Although, if any fellow Nvidia-ers experienced similar problems and know a workaround, I’d be very pleased to hear. :smile:

#6

Just an update for any fellow Nvidia-ers who experience any unusual problems with Ubuntu MATE and their card to try this solution by @TheWorldsAddress in another thread:

It’s fixed the screen tearing in Marco and has reduced the crashes in Compiz to at least a few more hours. It’s still a crashoholic. :stuck_out_tongue:

How to reset Compiz to MATE defaults?
#7

Just come by to update this thread again with feedback. After a bit of tweaking and disabling of plug-ins to the default MATE profile, Compiz isn’t too bad now with the crashes.

Okay, I will emphasise the crashes are less. I literally just pressed Super key + W (for Expo) and Compiz did it’s usual… crash. :blush:

Some of my changes that reduced the crashing:

  • Disabled the “Desktop Cube” and “Rotate Cube”.
  • Enabled “Expo” and “Desktop Wall” instead.
  • Disabled the Taskbar Preview Thumbnails.
  • Switched the Shift Switcher mode to “Flip” (looks like this plug-in is problematic)
  • Other cosmetic changes like “Scale” when resizing windows, colours, commands, etc

I’ve saved each log (48 items/1.1 MB worth) and they seem to be very similar, but they do happen at random. No idea what to do with them.

Hopefully one day, Compiz will work just fine and quit crashing all the time. It felt a lot more stable with regular Ubuntu’s “default” profile (after improperly resetting the profile, but misses key MATE functionality) :smile:

#8

I can confirm that Compiz is not crashing at all with me now. Don’t know why except I recently reinstalled UM. With this new installation, Compiz has only two outstanding issues for me. The first being that drop shadows were not working for the Mate panels and Mate panel menus and, secondly, the close/maximize/minimize buttons at the top right of windows mysteriously disappear occasionally.

The first problem has been fixed with some tweaking. The second problem is solved by simply pressing the relevant window’s panel tab to minimize it and then pressing it again to maximize it. For some reason, this immediately restores the buttons. I’ve no idea why. But, since this is no big deal, I can live with it. Though, it would be nice to find a permanent fix.

#9

So I submitted a merge proposal to upstream Compiz (it has been approved already) that changes the Compiz profile for MATE to now use the static switcher rather than the shift switcher. Shift switcher seems to be particularly problematic for some people, particularly when running Steam. I’ve also added the shadows @stevecook172001 requested.

That said, I always run Compiz and it’s never crashed on me. But keep you feedback coming because it is very useful :slight_smile:

1 Like
#10

Installed Ubuntu-Mate 15.04 on my Dell Studio 1745 with built in Intel graphics. Compiz while not crashing, slowed the computer somewhat, while marco didn’t.

But then, I never cared for cubes & wobbling windows (Hmmm, sounds like something Robin would say: “Wobbling Windows Batman”!) anyway, so said goodbye to Compiz. :wink:

#11

Overall, very happy with Compiz now. Occasionally missing windows buttons are the only remaining issue for me. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I resolve this by pressing on the offending window's panel tab to minimize and then re-maximise it. At which point, the buttons return. I can also re-produce the exact same effect by turning windows decorations off and then back on again in compiz-config-settings manager. See below, for a screen-shot of this issue:

Screenshot.png1280×768 298 KB

#12

One other thing I have noticed:

If i go to the corner of a window to resize it, in Compiz the resizing of the window is quite jerky and laggy. That is to say, I will move the mouse and the corner of the window will not move for a second and then will then jump to the mouse’s new position. In Marco, the resizing is much more fluid with no jerking. Though, there is more tearing with marco when resizing the window.

On the other hand, when it comes to moving windows around the screen by selecting and dragging the title bar, while both macro and Compiz are smooth and non-jerky, Marco has much more screen tearing than Compiz.

#13

Well, well, well… to my surprise, Compiz hasn’t crashed for over a week now. (Watch out, it’ll crash now :wink:)

Since unchecking some of the more exotic plug-ins and minor tweaks from the default profile (mainly the Cube, replaced by Expo/Desktop Wall) - Compiz is all around a lot more stable on my machine.

By the way, I’m sure I heard the Nvidia black bug was fixed, but sometimes I still see black windows when waking up from suspend on rare occasions. It was fixed, wasn’t it?

I experienced the same. It’s possibly caused by the live resizing of the window’s contents. You could revert to the previous “highlight” behaviour (that use to be the default on Ubuntu) or even to “Stretch”, both of them are much smoother. :thumbsup:

It can be modified in the “Resize Window” plug-in under the general tab.

#14

Whenever I was using Compiz I had performance and ugly stability issues with it - although I am using mostly by Intel manufactured mainboards with onboard GPU only (for compatibility reasons). I have also one Dell desktop with an external dual screen graphic adapter. Same story there. When I started to switch to MATE (Ubuntu 14.04) I tried to configure the system with Marco only. Marco is basically sufficient - it is simply a no nonsense window manager (no eye candy) and it never crashes. The basic memory footprint (after some configuration) is 245 MB (after booting). CPU usage around 1%. I am missing some window/workspace switching features of Compiz but those aren’t worth the loss of performance and stability. The basic theme configuration of Marco is also OK. My verdict: Users who just want to have a system with 100% reliability stick with Marco. The lack of distraction is a feature (and not a deficit) and the overall experience of MATE with Marco is great because nothing is in the way that I get my work done :smile:

#15

Without wishing to hijack the thread, I’ve never understood why people don’t use compiz 0.8.x, especially if you have an old computer. This is what I’ve compiled for powerpc users, and although I haven’t used the latest 0.9.x, there used to be a huge difference in stability and speed between the two branches. With the right patches you have mate integration, Marco theme switching works etc. Sadly, I accidentally deleted the package source files I used, but some old versions are still available online if you follow the links on the PowerPC release notes.

#16

Last remaining issue for me with Compiz is the occasionally missing minimize, maximize and close buttons on the top right of a window. To be specific, it now only occurs in Firefox windows. It used to occur in just about any window, but does not do so now. Don’t know why. I have narrowed down its occurrence to a specific type of event. Namely, if a Firefox window is already open with one website tab open inside it, If I then click on one of my short-cut launchers elsewhere on my system to another site, that other site will open as a second tab in my existing Firefox window. It is precisely when I do this that the windows buttons disappear. As previously mentioned, this is resolved by pressing the windows list button for this window on the lower panel to minimize it, then pressing the button again to maximize it. At which point, the buttons re-appear on the window

I should also say, this does not happen for every second or subsequent site I open. Only some, though I am unable to ascertain what it is about some sites that causes this. Though, it’s worth mentioning that this this very forum site is one of the offending ones. Again, don’t know why.

Also, finally, this only happens if the original Firefox window that has only the one tab open is minimised at the time of launching the second or subsequent site, thus causing the Firefox window to come out of it’s minimized state and into an open state. If I try and launch a second site with the existing Firefox window already open, then it all works without any problem vis a vis the windows buttons.

#17

I also found compiz very buggy and heavy and really wanted to keep using marco, try installing compton from the package manager and using it to eliminate tearing. I’m trying to make a topic about it in Tips and Trick but I can’t yet.

#18

Yeah, I use Compton on my laptop and notepad. It’s really light and works very well

I use the command:

compton -c -m 0.8

The -c switch provides shadowing and the -m switch provides menu transparency. 1 being fully opaque and 0 being fully transparent.