Getting Mate working on 24.04

Support & Help Requests
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1

I use Mate with Compiz on my Linux systems. My desktop is using Ubuntu 22.04. And works fine. I use my laptop to test out new installations of Ubuntu before updating my desktop. I updated my laptop to 23.04 and later 23.10. Mate or perhaps Compiz was always flaky on those with display errors left and right. Also, mate-panel would start and I had to kill Thunderbird and run Metacity instead of Compiz. But my laptop was not used as much and I tolerated it.

Recently 24.04 came around and I decided to update to it and now Mate/Compiz/etc is crap. I get display errors like the desktop has white streaks on it and videos and other websites have blotches of white making it almost impossible to use. I'd include a screenshot but so far taking a screenshot results in only a black image. But caja, for example, shows just a white blob where the files should be listed.

What steps can I take to get this back to a working environment? Is there software to install/update? Are there log files I can provide or other debugging steps?

2

if you boot and try (not install) um24.04 does everything work?

I have um24.04 on a VM and it is working w/o issues.

Can you provide details of your system? inxi -F

3

Display driver not working. Can you try tonfigure out which graphic card you have inside and which driver is exactly installed. Also try something like icewm or pekwm for testing purposes. If this doesnt even work then something is really wrong. The propretary nvidia driver had some gtk modules included that wont work on every system.

4

In my case the terminal read this via my graphics card

compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2e12] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Dell 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [1028:0420]
Kernel driver in use: i915

5

Oh, that has to do with the kernel if the graphics card stutters or the screen is black or white.

Change the kernel if there are problems with the graphics card.

Update - View - Linux Kernel.

Select a compatible kernel from the list there.

You have to check whether you can update your Ubuntu Mate, i.e. perform an update.

You then have to restart your system.

6 
Mars:inxi -F
System:
  Host: mars Kernel: 6.8.0-31-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: N/A Distro: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Apple product: MacBookPro11,5 v: 1.0
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Apple model: Mac-06F11F11946D27C5 v: MacBookPro11,5
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Apple v: MBP114.88Z.0172.B09.1602151732
    date: 02/15/2016
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 26.2 Wh (93.2%) condition: 28.1/99.8 Wh (28.2%)
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-4870HQ bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
    L2: 1024 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2337 min/max: 800/3700 cores: 1: 1600 2: 3689 3: 800
    4: 900 5: 800 6: 3616 7: 3700 8: 3595
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Venus XT [Radeon HD 8870M / R9 M270X/M370X] driver: radeon
    v: kernel
  Display: server: X.Org v: 21.1.4 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev dri: swrast gpu: radeon resolution: 1: 3840x2160
    2: 3840x2160~60Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: kms_swrast,radeonsi,swrast
    platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 vendor: mesa v: 24.0.5-1ubuntu1 renderer: llvmpipe
    (LLVM 17.0.6 256 bits)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: AMD Oland/Hainan/Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7000
    Series] driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-3: Broadcom 720p FaceTime HD Camera driver: N/A
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-31-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC driver: brcmfmac
  IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: f4:5c:89:90:09:47
  IF-ID-1: docker0 state: down mac: 02:42:fd:08:26:b9
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Apple Bluetooth Host Controller driver: btusb,hid-generic,usbhid
    type: USB
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 state: up address: F4:5C:89:90:09:48 bt-v: 4.1
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.92 GiB used: 91.46 GiB (19.6%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Apple model: SSD SM0512G size: 465.92 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 457.04 GiB used: 91.45 GiB (20.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 52.0 C pch: 49.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon
    temp: 58.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 16 GiB available: 15.5 GiB used: 3.91 GiB (25.2%)
  Processes: 360 Uptime: 16h 41m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.34
Mars:
7

AFAICT there is no Nvidia. This is a 2015 Macbook that I installed Ubuntu on.

Mars:lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Venus XT [Radeon HD 8870M / R9 M270X/M370X] (rev 83)
Mars:

Note, if I turn off hardware acceleration the browser (Brave, Chrome, and Firefox) all display unreadable and unusable white screens.

8

Not sure what you mean by Update - View - Linux Kernel. Where do you find Update?

With finagling, I can get a semi-usable system up. Again, there are drawing errors like white blotches I can run Synaptic as well as apt from the command line. No Mate packages are in need of an update. All packages are up to date. The system has been rebooted.

I went in and removed occurrences of Wayland since I don't use that thinking that may have been the problem. Didn't fix it.

9

Seems to be display driver problems but I don't know how to fix them or if they can be fixed. Does anybody know how to fix this?

Here are some videos showing you what I see.

10

Seems to me that between the age of the laptop, the older hardware, driver issues and trying to use compiz this will never work. I've backed off to using metacity for now.