Unity's constant whole-screen damaging uses a lot of CPU-cycles and energy, is not efficient and slows rendering down

[MC Return]

[How to reproduce]

1. Enable the showrepaint plugin in CCSM to be able to observe the damaging
2. Change the clock to show seconds also, or better "sudo apt-get install indicator-multiload"
3. Once indicator-multiload runs, activate showrepaint

[What you would expect to happen]

Unity/Compiz should damage the parts of the screen that are redrawing only, just like the other Compiz plugins do.

[What actually happens]

Unity constantly damages the whole screen, wasting a lot of energy and being completely energy-inefficient.
The problem gets worse if you add additional displays to your configuration.

Workaround:
Disable unityshell.

[Iven Hsu (ivenvd)]

I'm not using unity, but my screen keeps fullscreen redrawing. How can I see which plugin is causing this problem?

PS: I'm not using the "Workaround" Plugin.

[MC Return (mc-return)]

@ivend:
Turn them off one by one, and check the damaging with the "Show Repaint" plugin
 Note that other docks/programs can cause damage events also, so I would recommend also killing other programs drawing on the screen one by one to find the culprit.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Forgive the confusing jargon, but this is actually bug 1080947.