Does anyone have an idea why my desktop effects would always be suspended when I start up? I have a fast enough system (see below) and I don't get any warning that they're being suspended. When I manually resume desktop effects they work fine... until I restart again!

Specs:
Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 AMD64
ATI HD4850 + FGLRX
4 gig ram
SATA-II HDD

I'd be very greatful for any ideas so I don't have to restart them *every time*! Thanks!

It is possible that the system load is temporarily too high on startup causing the effects to be suspended, and the same high load prevents KNotify from functioning properly ( especially if you use Plasma notifications )

Any way to check that or get around it? Is it possible to ask kwin to only try and start desktop effects after all the systray stuff is loaded?

It's kind of weird, because this is pretty much a vanilla install on a decent machine, so if it's already under high load on boot, I would imagine it would be very difficult for anyone to get desktop effects without manually starting them.

One way to see if it is high load causing the issue would be to run top on a virtual terminal then login through KDM and check the load as soon as Plasma appears.

It could be possible that the system is still starting up when you login also.

Nice idea. Thanks for your help!

I'll give that a try.

I seem to be having the same problem. Any solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Specs:

ASUS F5
Intel Core2 DUO T5550
ATI Mobility Radeon
Kubuntu Karmic

Interesting. Both running Kubuntu with ATI graphics. On my SUSE Intel graphics system, I don't experience this ( Desktop Effects from first start )

Can you confirm that your system has fully started up ( usually indicated by terminals being available on Alt + F2, or HD activity stopping )

bcooksley wrote:Can you confirm that your system has fully started up ( usually indicated by terminals being available on Alt + F2, or HD activity stopping )

Not sure when you mean here, but I can get my system booting and leave it for 1/2 an hour after the desktop has shown and still not have desktop effects.

Weirdly enough, it seems to always take *two* Alt+Shift+F12 pushes before they come on.

Very interesting. Do you have the latest ATi drivers available installed ( from their website )?

My system is definitely fully booted - it takes no time to load and will pop-up a terminal straight away.

I think I'm on 8.66 vs 9.10 on the ATI website. I'm wary of upgrading though - I have a nice clean install and in the past, driver updates have killed the graphics on my system.

Is there no kwin log that would give some definitive diagnosis? It might be excessive load on start-up, but it might just be a config failure.

Is there a command line option to start compositing? Could try popping it in the autostart scripts.

I don't think I'd be that bothered if is wasn't for the fact that cairo-dock looks pretty sketchy without transparency!

bcooksley wrote:Interesting. Both running Kubuntu with ATI graphics. On my SUSE Intel graphics system, I don't experience this ( Desktop Effects from first start )

Can you confirm that your system has fully started up ( usually indicated by terminals being available on Alt + F2, or HD activity stopping )

Make that three...

Before Karmic I couldn't get desktop effects to run, I just accepted it was a driver issue as there's nothing underpowered about my system.

When I installed Karmic and the proprietary ATI drivers desktop effects started to work. But after every boot they are disabled; "Compositing temporarily disabled". Clearly there is something not quite right and I suspect it is Kubuntu at fault and not KDE.

Can one of the affected users please file a bug at Launchpad, and post a link to that here?

bcooksley wrote:Can one of the affected users please file a bug at Launchpad, and post a link to that here?

I will do but bizarrely when I booted this morning desktop effects were enabled and working. I've just done another cold boot and they are still working.

The only significant thing I've changed is to run boot processes in parallel so I'm going to run a test and see if it is this which has made the difference.

OK, I can't get them NOT to work anymore whichever setting I use and with a cold boot or reboot!

At the moment this problem has disappeared on my system which is good, there were some bug-fix updates yesterday afternoon which may explain things.

For now I won't file a bug report until I've monitored the situation for a few days.

This is definitely a temperamental problem and I've struggled to find a consistent pattern to it working or not.

I'm going to file a bug report, in the past I've used the KDE Bug Tracking System, is that the same as reporting a bug at Launchpad? Should I use one in preference over the other?