Variety freezes system during wallpaper change when under specific resource load

[Zachs Kappler]

I have noticed that while playing certain games like Terraria or Don't Starve while Variety is changing the wallpaper that my system freezes and becomes very unstable. Normally there would be a slight freeze when running other graphically intensive games or applications using Flash or HTML5 content.

I'm guessing this is related to the transition used for changing out the wallpapers. The ability to disable that effect would help me greatly.

Variety 0.5.5

Distro: Elementary OS Freya 0.3.1

System
CPU: AMD FX-6300
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1066MHz
Mobo: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
GPU: MSI N660 TF 2GD5 (Nvidia GTX 660)

[Zachs Kappler (jet-metalsonic500)]

No log from variety -v in a terminal because the bug fails to reproduce even when flipping through wallpapers.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

The transition is provided by Compiz when the wallpaper is changed, regardless whether via Variety or via Appearance settings. You might be able to disable it via some Compiz config tool. Variety does not have control over this.

Another option is to create a script/launcher that pauses Variety and then launches your game (the command would be "variety --pause") and resumes it after it quits ("variety --resume"). Alternatively you may setup a cronjob which checks whether your game is running (e.g. ps fax | grep gamename | wc -l) and pauses Variety if it does.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

Or, easier, you can edit ~/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper and put some check at the start, which would check if the game is running and exit without changing the wallpaper if it does.