Possible Compiz Bug - Mint 17.2 XFCE with Compiz?

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LinWinux
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Possible Compiz Bug - Mint 17.2 XFCE with Compiz?

Post by LinWinux »

Geeez, I haven't used Compiz in the past couple of years because although it's really cool, it's also a waste of time when you spend hours trying to configure your system "just so" on a production machine. So anyway, had Mint 16 XFCE installed and running without any problems. Eventually I upgraded to Mint 17 XFCE with a clean install and no problems. From there to Mint 17.1 XFCE also without any problems, but for some odd reason my wallpaper changer stopped working. No reaction whatsoever ... I could select wallpapers, adjust the time, reboot, power down, didn't matter what I did, the screen i.e. background remained the same ... default XFCE wallpaper. Aside from that the system was flawless as before even though I did miss not having my custom list of wallpapers available anymore.

Yesterday I switched over to Mint 17.2 XFCE and used the GUI to do that. Haven't done it that way in quite some time, but when I get people to switch from Windows to Linux not being able to use a GUI for that is a hard sell. Figured by now that should certainly be working. Yup, update went flawless with zero errors anywhere. Rebooted my system and got everything back just as it was with Mint 17.1 XFCE ... even the wallpapers were not working. :(

Alright, so I figured what the heck. Let's try Compiz again for a change and see if I can use the integrated wallpaper changer instead? Great, today I get to rebuild my system because Compiz totally hosed my desktop. I didn't have anything fancy configured since I was primarily interested in getting my wallpapers back. Once I had my wallpapers selected and rebooted the system ... my desktop was garbage. No more title bars (I happen to like them), every window was lining up with the upper left corner - thereby overlapping things that I keep on the left screen edge permanently, my workspaces "magically" went down from 3 to only 1 on the taskbar, and so on. Some of the Compiz settings were completely ignored while others did things which weren't supposed to be happening. Entering Compiz settings to undo everything ... showed that nothing was actively selected. What? What on earth is going on? Figured okay, maybe a shut down is in order and not just a reboot. Did that ... no change whatsoever.
Alright, so let's just get rid of Compiz altogether and (hopefully) revert back to my earlier XFCE settings.
Nope, trying to get rid of Compiz will also remove Mint specific applications which are required by the system.
I don't know why the Mint developers decided to toally embed Compiz into Mint but I think it was a dumb idea.
No biggie, getting ready to rebuild my system now. Word to the wise, you may want to reconsider the use of Compiz in 17.2 XFCE.

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Hawkeye_52

Re: Possible Compiz Bug - Mint 17.2 XFCE with Compiz?

Post by Hawkeye_52 »

I have also had problems with Compiz and 17.2, but mine are a little bit different. Whenever I selected Compiz for use, I could no longer access the 'Window Manager' setting options within the 'Settings Manager'; I would click on it, and the screen would just freeze. Whenever I went back to Xfwm, the settings problem went away. I like by 'bling' and all, but not enough to spend a bunch of time trying to track down a solution for something like this.

On the good side, all other things in 17.2 work exceptionally well for me!

Sorry for your problems, but I just thought I would chime in on your topic. :|

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LinWinux
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Re: Possible Compiz Bug - Mint 17.2 XFCE with Compiz?

Post by LinWinux »

Ever since my clean install, everything is perfect again. Well, 99.9 percent anyway. The only remaining issue in the new install is that I can't get any decent themes to work. In the window manager the only working themes are *NON* mint themes. Luckily Kokodi is red so that works for me. One of the things that attracted me to Linux initially back in 2007 / 2008 was the fact that changing your entire desktop any which way you like was a snap with gnome2. That's IMO something that should never have been abandoned. Now most distros are a mix between forced choices by the devs ... or compiz. That's actually the main reason why I use XFCE, because you can do with the panels whatever you want and have many or even none if you like, ranging from totally transparent to whatever you feel like setting. Ah well, I'm good now, got my wallpapers again ... :)
One thing's for sure. That was (probably) my last time with Compiz ...

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