Ubuntu 11.10 hates fullscreen!

[zngga]

So I have been developing a 3D game using LWJGL, I have had fullscreen support since the beginning and have certainly noticed the bugy-ness of the Unity Desktop on Ubuntu 11.10 (my main OS) after coming out of fullscreen. Has anyone else experienced this:
>unity launcher pop up in middle of screen (the most annoying bug)
>unity launcher shrinks down to only fit launchers and doesn't cover whole edge
>all open windows, no mater what workspace they are on move to workspace # 1 and maximize (not too annoying, but certainly a bug)
>all terminal text un-formats and becomes large and non-embellished (I hope the made sense)
>opening home folder form unity launcher fails to work

just to clarify, the above issues only happen after I have run my game in fullscreen (but they do stay bugged out, and don't return to normal until shut down, log out - login, or force restart of unity via terminal)

[edit] does anyone here even use Ubuntu...? shoulda asked that first, haha!

[ra4king]

Damn that's some serious bugged out POS!! I would have dumped it the first moment this happened

[jammas615]

I can't (couldn't) stand unity. It's hopeless.

I had ubuntu when it was at around 9.something when it still shipped with gnome and after i wiped my computer a while ago i never reinstalled but about a month ago a switched back to ubuntu and this stupid unity desktop, it really is bad, so bad i changed back to gnome 3 which is much better in so many ways.

Not sure if it will help, but switch to gnome 3... it may solve your problems.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[zngga]

I really like Ubuntu, but ever since version 11.04 they have used a new desktop manager called Unity (nothing to do with the language) Unity is pretty buggy and not fully tested, I thought the implementation was a little rushed, but as I am not a Ubuntu developer I have little say... anyway I do know that the Unity Desktop renders via OpenGL, so that may have something, or everything, to do with it.

[in response to being ninja'd]
Yeah I don't really like Unity either, sure it is pretty and all, but I would rather have 'working' over 'pretty' any day! Perhaps you could direct me to a decent walk through on switching to GNOME 3?

[feelingtheblanks]

I'm using Kubuntu 11.10 and I've also had similar issues for a while. I never even tried solving them honestly because they've existed for a long time, as i heard of.

[ra4king]

Unity is a game engine, not a language

And I suggest you follow jammas615's path

[feelingtheblanks]

Unity is a game engine, not a language

And I suggest you follow jammas615's path

Unity is also the name of Ubuntu's default desktop environment   see : http://unity.ubuntu.com/

[ra4king]

Yes I know, but I was only correcting this part:

...new desktop manager called Unity (nothing to do with the language)...

[jammas615]

This is a direct download link that's just the apt package and it should open with ubuntu software center:
http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/gnome

Then i suggest you get gnome tweak tool to change gnome themes and shortcuts and everything else.
Here:

1   2   3

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Google is your friend....

[zngga]

Google is your friend....

yep, already Goggled it! and installed / switched. Certainly better! Though I had to backup my home folder and re-install because of all the changes (that I lost track of) that I made to Ubuntu when I still was running unity... made the gnome interface un-readable and glitchy as hell!! No loss though, just had to re-install all my apps... sigh... I think it was worth it though, still have to check if the switch fixed the fulscreen problem... err, not fixed, more like avoid since it was (hopefully) a unity problem.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[jammas615]

I knew you'd like gnome better, when i installed ubuntu a few weeks ago i was like wtf is wrong with the desktop until i discovered that it had changed. Although i don't see why you ran into problems, i just installed and changed my desktop selection on the login screen...

[zngga]

I knew you'd like gnome better, when i installed ubuntu a few weeks ago i was like wtf is wrong with the desktop until i discovered that it had changed. Although i don't see why you ran into problems, i just installed and changed my desktop selection on the login screen...

I had installed a hole bunch of 3rd party software to change the way unity functioned and looked (like moving the unity launcher to the bottom of the screen) anyway, when I installed gnome shell it was very glitchy, text was missing characters and changed languages here and there... and when I opened to activities it would flicker for some time before settling down... finally I just backed up my home folder and did a fresh install, no worries!

[sproingie]

Unity and Gnome 3 pushed me back to KDE (something I hadn't used since KDE 2.x), which once you manage to de-uglify isn't bad at all nowadays.  It still has the same "tasks" metaphor but it's very much optional, and plasmoids are ugly and klunky but I just don't bother using most of them.  Now that I'm used to having a sane UI for setting powerful keybindings and window decorations I'm allowed to change (like adding the "sticky" control), I really don't think I'll ever be going back again.

[kappa]

Unity and Gnome 3 pushed me back to KDE (something I hadn't used since KDE 2.x), which once you manage to de-uglify isn't bad at all nowadays.  It still has the same "tasks" metaphor but it's very much optional, and plasmoids are ugly and klunky but I just don't bother using most of them.  Now that I'm used to having a sane UI for setting powerful keybindings and window decorations I'm allowed to change (like adding the "sticky" control), I really don't think I'll ever be going back again.

Agreed, KDE4 is really maturing nicely, I use it as my primary desktop too and really happy with it.

[nsigma]

@kappa / sproingie

Out of interest, which distros are you using for KDE?  I've not used KDE since Suse days up until ~2006.  Full-screen support is an absolute essential for me, so looking at the various options for an upgrade soon.

Thanks, Neil

[kappa]

@kappa / sproingie

Out of interest, which distros are you using for KDE?  I've not used KDE since Suse days up until ~2006.  Full-screen support is an absolute essential for me, so looking at the various options for an upgrade soon.

Thanks, Neil

I'm using OpenSUSE, it has one of the most polished KDE desktops but as sproingie mentioned above the default isn't that nice but can be tweaked pretty easily.

[Damocles]

Ubuntu wants people to switch to Linux Mint.

Its the only conclusion I can draw from that.

[nsigma]

Ubuntu wants people to switch to Linux Mint.

Funnily enough, I'm on Mint LTS at the moment, but am looking to move away from it.  Have generally been quite disappointed with the Mint attitude to supporting LTS releases.

I had a play with Ubuntu 11.10 on a live CD and actually found (not to my expectation) that I quite liked Unity.  However, the bug mentioned by the OP would be a showstopper for me.  Switching back to SUSE may well be considered.

[Damocles]

If you have Windows too, try out 11.10 as a win-installation before switching.
(easy to deinstall)

I personally think Unity and Gnome 3 are terrible.
Unity has the same FPS as Crysis on my machine... (like 15 fps)
Its much too demanding for a simply GUI.

[sproingie]

Out of interest, which distros are you using for KDE?  I've not used KDE since Suse days up until ~2006.  Full-screen support is an absolute essential for me, so looking at the various options for an upgrade soon.

I've used both the Fedora KDE spin and Kubuntu, and they're both pretty decent.  Fedora doesn't package any of the kdepim stuff, which I can't cry too much about, and Kubuntu has finally gotten its act together and packaged up everything decently this time.  I don't care for the default theme on either of them and find I need to install QtCurve to make it look decent.  Both have it in their package repos (yum or apt)

[zngga]

An update on my situation for anyone interested:

So GNOME Shell doesn't have the fullscreen issue that Unity had, but what is a killer for it is drivers. I have an ADM / ATI setup, and where Unity hates fullscreen, GNOME hates ADM / ATI graphics drivers! Once I installed my proprietary driver my computer became un-usable because everything glitched out so bad!! had to uninstall it... now I don't have hardware acceleration... sad... So I might be thinking about a KDE switch.

[kappa]

Kubuntu has finally gotten its act together and packaged up everything decently this time.

Yeh was nice until Canonical ceased its funding, sadly without dedicated resources pushing a distro it usually fails to reach a certain level of polish.

[cheekymonk3y]

I reinstalled Ubuntu after a 1 year without it because I couldn't get Backtrack5 to install properly. Like everyone else, I raged and raged at the Unity UI and after 3 hours of nervous ticks revealing themselves, I deleted the partition.

I might try it again with gnome or kde if I ever need to use ubuntu again.

[Riven]

Installing Gnome on Ubuntu takes only 5 minutes:

1	sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Then sign out, and pick the new desktop-manager while signing in.