I just installed the beta version of Kubuntu 11.04 which ships with kde 4.6.1, I noticed that the blur effect which works fine with Kubuntu 10.10 no longer works. When I checked system settings I can see that blur is enabled but the actual effect does not work (like non of the semi transparent goodies ) and disabling the effect shows no difference what so ever.

here are some information about my hardware
My laptop is running the Intel Arrandale graphic chip.
On Kubuntu 10.10 I am using the Intel X driver version 2.12
On Kubuntu 11.04 beta I am using Intel X driver version 2.14

The kernel version on 10.10 is 2.6.35 while 11.04 is 2.6.38

Can anyone confirm to me if the intel arrandale driver has some functionality blacklisted in kde 4.6.1? I would really appreciate feed back on this so I know whether this is an isolated issue, a kubuntu bug or an upstream bug.

Some in the kwin irc suggested I check the kwin driver blacklist to see if my display driver is listed. I checked and it has not been blacklisted from running blur. Just felt to add that.

IIRC, Blur works really badly with Intel drivers.

@ einar blur is fine with intel when it's working properly

@ bigbrovar could be this bug.
Check output of glxinfo | grep direct gives direct rendering: Yes
and compare output of kwin --replace. If you see Direct rendering: no then it probably is this bug.

This is a bug of the Intel drivers, you have to start kwin with this command:


KWIN_DIRECT_GL=1 kwin --replace &



This force to enable the direct rendering on kwin and enable all effects.

On my computer this ghost from the past came haunting me again this morning after I installed Kubuntu Oneric.
None of the desktop-effects were working.

But then I installed the kde-window-manager-gles and suddenly everything worked like a charm!
Just to let you know.