3d desktop effects is not (and has yet never been) stable for the majority of hardware/drivers that is used with Ubuntu - Compare with Mac OS X

[Motin]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-desktop

This is a metabug (like bug #1) that denotes that Ubuntu's 3d Desktop / Compiz rendering effects / Composite graphics mode etc is NOT stable on/for the majority of hardware/drivers on which Ubuntu desktop edition is run (hence reporting against the ubuntu-desktop package).

Until this bug is solved, it is not relevant to talk about Ubuntu as providing 3d effects in any other matter other than a test/development version. We cannot recommend anyone that actually uses Ubuntu professionally to have them enabled.

When I refer to stable I mean the following more rudimentary specs:
 - No X server crashes
 - No recurrent garbled or corrupted displays

But ALSO:
 - No overlay/transparency rendering glitches
 - No weird window behaviors when maximizing/moving (top window decorations inaccessible under the top panel, no minimizing of certain windows, inability to move certain windows etc)
 - No flickering
 - No weird white or black space displaying in various parts of the desktop

In short, I'd put the this bug as solved for a specific hardware/driver combination when one can expect to be able to work weeks and weeks and run 15-25 windows/applications simultaneously non-stop with at least but minimal 3d desktop effects enabled without experiencing any of the above nuisances. The same sort of usability that Mac-users take for granted.

Steps to reproduce:
 1. Enable the basic desktop effects
 2. Use your computer as usual for say around 100 hours
 3. If none of the above problems were experienced, please report this hardware/driver combination success together with the output of "lspci -vvnn", your xorg.conf-file together with any eventual special steps taken to achieve the problem free desktop effects set-up.
 4. If any of the above problems occur, please report them as separate bugs in case they are not already reported - this meta-bug is only for tracking the overall usability issues.

This bug is solved when we can confirm full stability with the most used graphics cards and drivers (anyone have a good list to track the bug against?)
 - Most used Nvidia cards and drivers
 - Most used Intel cards and drivers
 - Most used ATI cards and drivers

[LimCore (limcore)]

This looks also like my bug#323720 so please confirm mine, if you are refering to same "rendering glitches" as I am describing there (uninitialized pixmaps?)

[Motin (motin)]

That bug was marked as a duplicate of bug #254468, which is supposed to have been fixed in Jaunty. Sounds promising.
Overall, with Jaunty's X 1.6 and the new Nvidia 180.x drivers, it will be very interesting now to see if this bug is fixed for some Nvidia users at least. I'll report back after 95+ hours more testing...

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi motin,

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? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? (ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/)

If it remains an issue, could you also attach a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
Thanks in advance.

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[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

While I don't have anything against metabugs, this one seems not to be active. As written, it isn't going to serve much value as a bug report since there is not a specific task to complete, but rather asks that "all bugs should be fixed", which is better tracked by just watching the number of bugs filed against mesa.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

As per https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/309747/comments/4 .