Good afternoon,

Dark icons and objects place a horizontal shadow (for the lack of a better term) across my desktop with a lighter background (as do light icons/objects with a dark desktop background). While this is most noticeable with icons, contrasting colors, text, etc.. seem to do this as well, all horizontally. The height of the horizontal shadow exactly matches the height of the icon or whatever is casting the shadow. This did not occur with older versions of Debian and KDE that I have used in the past and I am really disappointed with the resulting video display to be honest. Any thoughts on how to correct this will be most appreciated; thanks in advance...

MB - Asus P2B-D
CPU - Pentium II (x2)
Mem - 655,384K
hda - Matrox 52049U4
hdc - TDK CDRW4800B
OS - Debian Lenny
Kernel - 2.6.26-2.686
Video Card - Diamond Viper V770 AGP2X 32 mb (Riva TNT2)
X Ver - Xorg 1:7.3+18
X Driver - Xserver-xorg-video-nv 1:2.1.10-1
Desktop - KDE 4:4.1.4-1 ~ Lenny+1 w/KDM
Montior - Samsung SyncMaster 205BW
Sound - Ensonic ES1371
NIC - Future Domain TMC-18C30

3D Effects have likely been enabled by default. Try disabling them.

Good afternoon and Happy 4th of July,

I have been to sea for the last 2.5 weeks so unable to check in. I tried to find a way to turn off 3D effects and was unable to find anything relating to that including within the "System Settings" sub-program. Any tips as to how to disable 3D Effects (if found to be ON) will be appreciated. Thanks again...

System Settings -> Desktop -> Desktop Effects, uncheck "Enable desktop effects".

Thank you Hans but unfortunately that was not the problem as with the Desktop Effects disabled (default) the horizontal shadows still are present either side of icons, sub-windows, etc...

Any other suggestions will be most appreciated...

John, could you please post a screenshot?

Here is an attempt, never done this before. The dark box with the file list should be casting a shadow to the left and right (the most obvious at least)

Looking at the screenshot posted with my Windoze workstation it seems to be clear, no shadows. When I view it with my Linux box the shadows are there. Perhaps it is the size but once posted the image seems normal. Hmmm, could it be an X.Org problem?

It seems like your screenshot has been scaled down, which makes it hard to see anything. Could you please link to the full-size version?

I tried originally with the full size snapshot. I got an error message from Photobucket saying the image was to large and needed to be reduced.

Are you using a proprietary video driver from NVidia or ATI? If so, try disabling them and trying "vesa" as your video driver.

You could try other image hosting sites, such as imageshack.

Good evening,

Apologize for the delay in responding, been at sea again.

Originally I had the default vesa driver when I upgraded to Lenny, the shadows were present with it so I installed the current driver. That made no difference.

WRT posting another screen shot, the resulting file when viewed with my other box does not show the shadows, they only appear on my desktop, "prtscn" apparently cannot capture them. BTW, if I login with a session other than KDE the shadows show up also. Here is my xorg.conf that relates to the video:

Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia Corporation NV5 [RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro]"
Driver "nv"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
Identifier "Samsung205BW"
VendorName "Samsung"
ModelName "SyncMaster 205BW"
HorizSync 31.4 - 80.0
VertRefresh 56.000 - 75.000
Modeline "1680x1050" 146.25 1680 1784 1960 2240 1050 1053 1059 1089
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "nVidia Corporation NV5 [RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro]"
Monitor "Samsung205BW"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Any suggestions will be most welcome, thanks in advance...

"Identifier "nVidia Corporation NV5 [RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro]""

Sorry but I think you should forget KDE4 with this card (personnal experience).

I bought a cheap and basic ATI Radeon 9200 (fanless), and works fine with open drivers.
BTW, more and more difficult to find basic & fanless AGP cards.