System : KDE 4.5.1 (updated till date) on Kubuntu 10.10 beta.

Till 2 days back, I was having almost no problem with my desktop. Other than a regular crash of Kbluetooth while shut down, there were no issues like desktop freezing, or KWin crawling.

After perhaps the last update (this is my guess - considering the timing of the problem - it may not be correct), I am having serious problem like frequent crashes, freezes etc.

Earlier I was having compiz but now compiz is not working. Whenever I am trying to activate it either by fusion-icon or from settings it is not loading and WM is getting changed to KWIN. I tried with desktop effects on with KWin. But after sometime (may be an hour or so) system is behaving extremely slow.

My driver is Intel. Here is the lspci listing :

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

I need help to get this issue solved.

Do the crashes / freezes occur with Desktop Effects disabled?
If they don't, try and troubleshoot by disabling all effects then selectively enabling them until the problem re-appears.

bcooksley wrote:Do the crashes / freezes occur with Desktop Effects disabled?
If they don't, try and troubleshoot by disabling all effects then selectively enabling them until the problem re-appears.

Without desktop effect no crashes happened, but even without desktop effect I noted severe slow response from certain open windows, though that happened occasionally.

Finally I cleared compiz settings and used Kwin with desktop effects on and blur off. Now system is behaving better till this time. No crashes - no freezes. Hopefully it stays that way.

I still have one issue and that is at times I am noticing that in FF when scrolling a page the left side doesn't match with right side. That means broken texts. But this was till yesterday. Today morning I noticed a big update happened and Kwin was updated -

It seems blur effect may be the reason but surprisingly with Compiz I had blur on and it was working all well for many days. Expecting better result today.

As soon as I completed the above post where I mentioned that no crash , no freeze etc. happened, I just had another freeze.

When the screen freezes, there are multiple colors on the screen showing. Not Ctrl+Alt+F1 works either. So I had to hard boot.

I have switched off all desktop effects and will continue with this setup. I also noticed that evertime I make changes in the desktop settings and click save, kwin crashes.

Can someone please help me with some steps through which I can make compiz work once again. Every time I try to start it, it doesn't start and wm goes to default Kwin.

Ok, looks like the Intel drivers are having issues. Do you notice something in common with all the crashes? ( Such as Adobe Flash running )

Compiz requires fully functional Desktop Effects however, so you will need to remain with KWin for now until you have your graphics drivers sorted.

bcooksley wrote:Ok, looks like the Intel drivers are having issues. Do you notice something in common with all the crashes? ( Such as Adobe Flash running )

Compiz requires fully functional Desktop Effects however, so you will need to remain with KWin for now until you have your graphics drivers sorted.

Thanks bcooksley for your help.

About flash, I recalled that in all the cases the screen got freezed when I was in a browser, but the site(s) I was using had no flash usage as per I remember.

About Compiz, I would like to mention here that it was working with KDE 4.5.1 + Kubuntu 10.10 beta just a few days back in the same system. So I am not sure why it is not working now.

But since yesterday's crash till now it's working better (no freezing and desktop effects are on with KWin), except that sometimes browser page does not get refreshed properly during scrolling.

There have been more that two updates since yesterday and kwin looks like
behaving more faster.

arindom wrote:except that sometimes browser page does not get refreshed properly during scrolling.

Please find here a screenshot of the problem I mentioned above.




Is this also due to driver?

Which browser are you using? Effects such as that aren't usually caused by the driver, but by the application.

bcooksley wrote:Which browser are you using? Effects such as that aren't usually caused by the driver, but by the application.

I am seeing this both on FF and Chrome since last few days.

Ok, it must be related to your graphics driver then. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do other than try various versions of the driver and contact your distribution.

bcooksley wrote:Ok, it must be related to your graphics driver then. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do other than try various versions of the driver and contact your distribution.

Thanks. I am also hoping that in coming days they release a better driver and it gets solved.

After I re-installed Kubuntu beta directly (last time I upgraded), looks like the freezing problem is no longer happening till now in more than 24 hours.

Compiz is also working now.

Overall the issue looked like was with Kwin because earlier I was not experiencing any problem when Compiz was working well. As Compiz is again running I think there should be no further serious issues.