Fix for Flickering Fullscreen Application with Compiz
I’ve been using Firefox’s fullscreen mode on my Eee PC to get the maximum amount of vertical screen space possible. I noticed that the screen flickers black briefly whenever a tooltip or right click menu is displayed. All fullscreen applications seem to be affected.
This bug can be worked around by changing an advanced Compiz setting to turn off the unredirecting of fullscreen windows.
Run this command in a terminal to turn the setting off, and fix the flickering:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/unredirect_fullscreen_windows --type bool 0
To switch it back on:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/unredirect_fullscreen_windows --type bool 1
If you’re using the CompizConfig Settings Manager, you can change the same
setting by opening General Options->General and unselecting Unredirect
Fullscreen Windows.
Firefox’s fullscreen mode works flawlessly with this workaround, but 3D applications that run fullscreen might be impacted by redirected rendering. When a window is unredirected, it’s not composited by Compiz, which should be faster.
This problem seems to be with the Intel graphics driver. When a fullscreen application has a window open above it, like a tool tip or menu, it switches from being rendered directly to redirected because of Compiz. This switch seems to cause the Intel driver trouble, and results in a flicker.
Archived Comments
iampriteshdesai
Tom!
You are amazing!!!
I faced this problem too and was pisssed by it. You rock and you definately are
the best Linux blogger out there!!!
Hats off to you!
I want to ask your permission, this is regards to your earlier post on Check
Gmail. I want to include those fixes you wrote. Can I use them in my blog?
www.helpforlinux.blogspot.com
I’ll include and backlink.
Thanx for the hack.
Can you plz post an hack to use mintinstall in Ubuntu? Coz I hate having to load
20 mb+ every time I make changes to Synaptic. I have bad broadband (less monthly
transfer )
Thanx and you rock!
Tom
iampriteshdesai:
That’s fine with me.
I’ll look into mintinstall, I’ve never used it before.
JesperDJ
Tom, why didn’t add your workaround to the bug report? That might help the developers find out how to fix the bug quicker.
I added a link to this article in the bug report.
bobjohnsomilw
Someone, somewhere make this the default for intel graphics in the distribution release. this was an absolutely maddeningly annoying problem, and I can’t believe it took me this long (easily a year, to define what was going on and finally find a result that was useful to address this)
Thank you for this…
Anonymous
Thanks for the fix. :)
Tim
Thanks - fantastic. That flicker was really bugging me.
Vadim
nVidia has this too.
bARTec
For a while a lived with it… This morning I thought to fix this ugly bug. And with u it took me 2 min searching and 1 line.
Thanks Man!!
Isaak
Thanks, I’m finally rid of this annoyance :-)
Darek
THANKS
It may have not been very much of a usability problem, but once I noticed the flickering it was driving me mad! What a relief…
moonloop
Also, thanks a lot to get rid of this nerving flicker.
Green.cx
Wow thanks a ton.
I’ve had this problem from day 1 a few years ago on my EEE 701. ASUS told me it
wasn’t their problem cause it must be a software bug.
FF drove me nuts so I went to Chrome and had no problems until a adobe flash update brought it all back, then it started doing it even in bios!!
So what do I do now? The left half and the the right half will flicker in a rapid alternating fashion.
It was only in Firefox for the longest time…
And suggestions on what I should try next?
mace
Thanks, this solved it for me!! I’ve had this problem on my EeePC 901 since in installed Ubuntu 8.10, but it got a whole lot worse with 9.04. It’s fixed now, and i hope i won’t come across any side-effects since i’m not quite sure i understand what that commands precisely does. I’d better go and find out :)
Anon
You can do this manually by pressing alt+F2 or run, gconf-editor then clicking through the tree on the left. /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/unredirect_fullscreen_windows. Then just check or uncheck the box.
Zac
Thanks for the fix, that was driving me crazy.
Sheck
Finally !!!
Man, this fixed it. I was having the same issue with full-screen videos. Annoying as hell.
Thanks a lot.
some random fish
Perfect… Just perfect…
Mustafa Elnaquib
I can confirm this bug on my debian testing, Toshiba with vga ATI, it’s not intel thing
Mads
Yes! Thank you.
Cherif
I had the same issue with my GeForce 8400 back in June. Some recent updates (either to the kernel or to the nvidia drivers, I’m not sure which one exactly) seem to have fixed the problem.
But It’s good to actually know where the problem comes from. Thanks