Comment 0 for bug 254468

Binary package hint: kubuntu-kde4-desktop

I'm running KDE 4.1 from the ppa listed at kubuntu.org, but I've had this issue ever since the first 4.0 betas. This is on a Hardy machine.

Whenever a new object is drawn, such as the application menu or any application whatsoever, the space in which it will be drawn is first allocated with video garbage. After a brief delay - perhaps 200ms - the garbage is properly replaced with the real object contents. It looks as if it's displaying "old" video memory, if that makes sense. It is hard/impossible to get a proper screenshot depicting this.

Restoring a minimized Firefox is a surefire way of reproducing it; every other time it will be video garbage, every other time it will just be a black box. And again, application menu, right-click menus, titlebar menus; *anything* KDE4 draws. After having once spawned the object, the next time it will draw "garbagelessly", with some exceptions (such as Firefox, for some reason).

I've tried and gotten this on two machines running Intel integrated graphics (with the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver), and one with the proprietary Nvidia driver; both exhibit the same behavior. I've had some other people confirming it at the Ubuntu forums, too. Please see: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=788023&highlight=drawn+time&p=5009121 and the following few replies.

Enabling or disabling Desktop Effects doesn't seem to make any difference, and I've tried enabling random video options in xorg.conf but I can't say I've had much luck. For instance, on this intel machine:

        Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
        Option "InitialPixmapPlacement" "2"
        Option "DRI" "true"
        Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
        Option "ExaNoComposite" "false"
        Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
        Option "BackingStore" "true"
        Option "PageFlip" "true"
        Option "TripleBuffering" "true"

Again, even with a vanilla xorg.conf with no explicit video options defined, the behavior persists.

Some other info:

        $ apt-cache policy kdebase-bin-kde4 kde-window-manager
        kdebase-bin-kde4:
          Installed: 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2
          Candidate: 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2
          Version table:
         *** 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2 0
                500 http://ppa.launchpad.net hardy/main Packages
                100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
             4:4.0.5-0ubuntu1~hardy1 0
                500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-backports/main Packages
             4:4.0.3-0ubuntu2 0
                500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        kde-window-manager:
          Installed: 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2
          Candidate: 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2
          Version table:
         *** 4:4.1.0-0ubuntu1~hardy1~ppa2 0
                500 http://ppa.launchpad.net hardy/main Packages
                100 /var/lib/dpkg/status