Workspace switcher preview compressed after increasing Visual Effects

[Nonconventionally Creative]

On a new install of 8.04, I ran updates and installed a few packages that shouldn't have any effect at all on the display.
The only thing I did related to the display was install the restricted driver for my ATI Radeon X1600 (oh, and moved that one bar to the bottom, since I'm used to Windows)

The scenario is this:
With "Appearance Preferences/Visual Effects" set to "None", I set there to be two rows for a total of six workspaces (3 each - this should really use the row/column like the other one)
Then I enabled Visual Effects (whether to Normal or Extra made no difference) and it put all of my workspaces on a single row, using the top half of the workspace display. When I set it to 2 rows of three columns, it compressed everything to something really small - but not unclickable - crammed in the top half of the display.

With some experimentation I determined:
The number of columns has no effect whatsoever.
If more than two rows are used when Virtual Effects are off, then when they are turned on the new rows are compressed into the corresponding fraction of available space.

To workaround, turn Virtual Effects off and set all workspaces to one row, then turn them on again and arrange as desired.

[Matt Filizzi (fizzatbeyond)]

I have the same problem in 8.10 beta. I use only 4 workspaces (2x2). The workaround mentioned above also does work for me.

The computer I am using does not use the ATI Radeon drivers so I am assuming that is not the cause. Also I did not move the bars around so that is unlikely to be it as well.

One thing that I did do prior to starting compiz initially was I renamed the workspaces. It is probably unrelated however compiz did not keep the names instead refering to them as "Desk 1" through "Desk 4"

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Could you try to reproduce the same with Ubuntu 9.04? Thanks in advance.

[Nonconventionally Creative (br-longbons)]

Sorry, I can't enable visual effects with the VirtualBox graphics driver, even with the video memory increased and "Enable 3D acceleration" checked. Is there a way to force compiz to activate with software rendering or something?

I don't want to overwrite my only machine, and the LiveCD doesn't run the restricted drivers, right? (I haven't actually downloaded the ISO; I did an upgrade from an Intrepid install in VirtualBox.)

[Matt Filizzi (fizzatbeyond)]

I attempted to upgrade my machine to run 9.04 with no success. I actually hit some kind of a bug where the system would lock up whenever I attempted to log into X so I was unable to test it as well.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Nonconventionally Creative (br-longbons)]

I couldn't test it on Jaunty earlier because my ATI Radeon X1600 didn't have the binary driver for the new X server.
Now that I got some hardware upgrades, I upgraded and tried again, but after getting the nvidia binary drivers to work, it told me "Desktop effects cannot be enabled."
So, although I confirmed it on Hardy and Intrepid, I can't test it on Jaunty. Is there some way to force changing the desktop-switcher? I don't see why this bug is still marked "Incomplete," what more information can I give? Surely there is *someone* out there who can enable desktop effects...

[Nonconventionally Creative (br-longbons)]

Okay, whatever was preventing me from activating visual effects went away, so:
I can now reproduce this on Jaunty

[Nonconventionally Creative (br-longbons)]

I don't see what's incomplete about this bug. I know I'm not supposed to confirm my own bugs, so why can't someone do something about it? It is 100% reproduceable, given a decent graphics card.

And if I'm just going to be told "upgrade to the next (alpha) release and see if it goes away" again ... I suppose I could. Now that I've had no problems with 64-bit on my laptop (which I'm using more, now; I used to read about things like flash not working), I feel like I should stop running 32-bit on this one. So before I reinstall, I could give it a try. My university has a mirror, so I get good speeds.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

The code that handles changing metacity settings to compiz settings when using this toggle is actually in gnome-control-center.

[Nonconventionally Creative (br-longbons)]

This bug went away spontaneously after upgrading to karmic.