Compiz and mintupdate 5.8.4

[SolidState]

Greetings fellow mint users,

Still using compiz, but having an issue and it involves the mintupdate-launcher. The Tray icon for mintupdate sits in the Notification area and properly indicates pending updates just fine. But during a login session I can only access the update manager once from the tray icon to view and install any pending updates. Subsequent updates in the same login sessions can only be viewed and installed if I do either of the following: Launch the update manager from the system menu, or run the mintupdate-launcher command from a shell. So in short all I get is one chance to see and apply updates without the intervention mentioned. Any other window manager works fine with the update icon. It's a minor annoyance, and as long as the tray icon will continue to notify of updates all is good. But still it's a bug and I am guessing that infrequent posts on the subject of compiz may relate to either its diminished popularity or no one else has too many otther problems. I know for my setup here that turning on certain plugins will turn the desktop instantly into an unusable state without any collision warnings. All in all another mystery. I am a fan of compiz and have been since about 2007 on ubuntustudio.

So has anyone else experienced this issue of the one shot only on the update notification tray icon? Any tips clues helpful. I tried even turning off all plugins and the bug remains. Using mintupdate 5.8.4

Using mate desktop on mint 20.3

Thanks for reading.

[Cosmo.]

You mean, who uses it? There are most likely not so many fans, see viewtopic.php?t=332556

[JTJersey]

I reported this issue several months ago. Compiz gives me most of the visual effects in Mate that are available in Cinnamon without the wierdnesses. Sorry, not a fan of the way Cinnamon does things. I really hope they fix this bug eventually.

[SolidState]

You mean, who uses it? There are most likely not so many fans, see viewtopic.php?t=332556

Yes I've seen this thread and thank you for pointing it out.

[SolidState]

I reported this issue several months ago. Compiz gives me most of the visual effects in Mate that are available in Cinnamon without the wierdnesses. Sorry, not a fan of the way Cinnamon does things. I really hope they fix this bug eventually.

Thanks for your input and reporting the bug. Good to know I'm not alone. Compiz has always worked well for me as long as I remain mindful of a few no go plugins, like the D-bus backend, which has no description of what it does anyway, and the Crash Handler, ironic. Always crashes as soon as it's active. So many features I have come to depend on, like multiple viewports -- I use 8 -- and the carousel like feature of Shift Switcher across either the current viewport or all viewports. So easy to switch apps via a few keystrokes. Manages clutter.

So I hope this bug does get fixed and does not creep into other notification tray icons because of some backend re-design.

[rickNS]

I've been using compiz, nearly as long as Mint itself, never an issue. I guess I'm a "fan".
The "bug" you describe does seem quite trivial, (I've not experienced it) is it necessary to update more than once per login session anyway ?

Compiz has always worked well for me as long as I remain mindful of a few no go plugins, like the D-bus backend, which has no description of what it does anyway,

It's documented,

Compiz crashes when enabling the D-Bus plugin

The D-Bus plugin will cause Compiz to crash if enabled in conjunction with certain other plugins such as the Cube plugin. See the following upstream bug report.

This is why compiz gets a bad name, you (people) enable something which you don't know what it does (don't know what it does, therefore can't possibly need it) then complain about a crash.

In fairness, compiz's config manager displays a warning upon startup which reads the following;

"This tool allows you to deeply configure Compiz's settings. Some options may be incompatible with each other. Unless used with care, it is possible to be left with an unusable desktop."

Therefore my advice is never experiment on a production machine, instead use a VM, or live .iso, this applies to ANY experiment, not just compiz. How many threads have we seen, I deleted python, I deleted X, etc. or the ever popular, "No I don't have a timeshift snapshot".

PS, SolidState, I hope you don't think I ragging on you personally, I am NOT, just want to be a voice for compiz, as it nearly got dropped from Mint in version 20. If you remember it had shipped with a "blank" profile, IE no window decoration, and people complained, bla, bla.

[SolidState]

Sir,

Your tone is less than generous, that's all, and I cannot see your position as defending compiz simply by qualifying or disqualifying your comments as "not ragging." Nevertheless, thank you for your contribution.


p.s
I am a big fan of compiz. It would be an unwelcome change to do without it.

[rickNS]

Sir,

Your tone is less than generous, that's all, and I cannot see your position as defending compiz simply

You can not see it, well you are entitled to believe what you like, but there was a brief time about Mint 20 , and before 20.1 where Clem had actually removed compiz...

viewtopic.php?p=1933783#p1933783

and the whole thread, is a should read,

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=333065

If it were not for myself, and member @all41, "championing" for compiz it might have already been gone for good.

So please try not to be too sensitive, what I said really was not about you.

[all41]

from the last commit on Compiz 0.9.14.1 (current version) here:
https://code.launchpad.net/~muktupavels ... rge/374783

Commit message

Remove MATE configuration.
Description of the change

Configuration files should be provided by upstream project - MATE.

Same thing was done with Unity:
- https://code.launchpad.net/~muktupavels ... rge/362802
- https://code.launchpad.net/~muktupavels ... rge/362759

GNOME Flashback will provide its own configuration too:
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-fl ... equests/16

So MATE dropped the ball. Not being caught during beta is unusual. I went to Compiz and immediately noticed
the lack of Window Decorations but only an experienced Compiz user would know where to look (hindsight),
that's when I noticed there was no default profile at all.
I was probably thinking Great!--less settings to verify and disable. I did not see any topics discussing this during beta,
so the team didn't get notified, and the stable was released. The first discussion was after the stable release.
I mainly use the Windows Placement and Windows Rules

[Jo-con-Ël]

Yes that also happens to me, Update manager works as expected first time you click icon on panel, next times it does not pop-up Update Manager window when clicking but you can refresh with right-click.

About windows decoration yes it is a mess. In my case order on Compizconfig Setting Manager>Windows decaration is gtk-window-decorator --replace.

But need to do something more in order that decorations match theme installed on system on most windows, not all windows (some windows as dconf-editor change its decoration on my case don't know why). I vagely remember I've defined my favorite theme with deconf-editor>org>gnome>metacity>theme (it will be empty by default) and ensure type is gtk (default).

It works better if activated Gnome Compatibilty and disable Mate compatibility on Compizconfig setting manager>General.

[billyswong]

You mean, who uses it? There are most likely not so many fans, see viewtopic.php?t=332556

I use Compiz for:
1) alt-scrollwheel for turning a window semi-transparent, with any level of opacity I want on my fingertip, so that I may read/access BOTH the top-level window content and lower-level window content at the same time.
2) an exact 2x screen zoom for playing the classic "3D Pinball" originated in Win9x era, which was designed in the era that monitors are usually 640x480 or 800x600, and looks too small in nowadays monitors.
3) the nice-looking cube effect when switching workspace

So my usage is mostly NOT about eye-candy.