Unity/Compiz/Unity-Window-Decorator: add a watchdog to restart the stack whenever something goes wrong
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ayatana Design |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Current situation, Unity and Compiz crash; which we know. They crash more often than applications; which we also know. They leave the desktop (and any work within it) running, but inaccessible; which we also know this. For the advanced user they can generally do:
Ctrl-Alt-F1
killall -9 compiz
unity --replace
Ctrl-Alt-F8 (and wait 15 seconds for Unity to catch-up)
Perhaps this is something that we can automate with a bullet-proof watchdog handler that will automatically restart Compiz/Unity (or any Window-manager) when it disconnects from the X server.
In Ubuntu our greatest success has been automation. If we can't stop the crashes in the short-term, perhaps we instigate a better user experience and feeling of security and completeness. Again, the Watchdog handler might not be perfect, but if it only crashed one time out of ten then that's still ten times more reliable than the present.
This would at least allow the user then file the apport crash test after it has been caught!
