Glx-Dock / Cairo-Dock - v3.0.0 transparency not working, any ideas?

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Glx-Dock / Cairo-Dock List of forums Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation v3.0.0 transparency not working, any ideas?

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Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation

	Subjects	Author	Language	Messages	Last message
	v3.0.0 transparency not working, any ideas?	izzo	English	18	fabounet [Read] 13 September 2012 à 17:25

izzo, Tuesday 21 August 2012 à 20:16

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

Laptop:
AMD 1.6GHz quad core A6-3420M
4GB ram
MATE (and I HATE it already)
AMD Radeon HD6520G video 512MB (using 3D accelerated ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX driver)

OS
mint 13 maya 32-bit 3.2.0-23-generic

Cairo-Dock
v3.0.0 WITH Open GL

Problem
Like the topic says, transparency is NOT working. There is a black rectangle when the dock pops, and the rectangle is over ALL windows, even VMware...

Rectangle:

Dock open in rectangle on mouse over:

Transparency settings in Cairo-Dock:

ANy ideas on how to fix that?

On my desktop (mint 12 katya) with Gnome I don't have this problem...

taiebot65, Tuesday 21 August 2012 à 22:14

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Subscription date : 26 October 2008
Messages : 1789

Do you have a windows manager enable like compiz or metacity.

http://glx-dock.org/ww_page.php?p=Recurrents%20problems&lang=en

matttbe, Tuesday 21 August 2012 à 22:18

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

Hello,

It seems Cairo-Dock's window can't be composited (it can't use transparency).
There is two possibilities:

It's a problem with your window manager:

Arf, you're using mate and I guess they have modified the name of all options . Thanks to Google, it seems your window manager is called 'mate-window-manager' (Metacity's fork?). Can you launch 'gconf-editor' (or mateconf-editor???), press Ctrl+F and search for 'compositing'. On Metacity, the key is there: '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager'. If you find how to enable this key, can you explain how you did it in order to improve our wiki?

Or it's a problem with your video card (or its drivers)

Do you have this problem with the free drivers too? (without FGLRX/Catalyst)

Note that you can also use a 'fake transparency' as mentioned on our wiki (see taiebot65's message)

fabounet, Wednesday 22 August 2012 à 12:50

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Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 16693

<moaning>
Mate is currently the worst abomination on the Linux scene, because it breaks everything while provinding nothing new
better use XFCE then
</moaning>
anyway, try with Compiz (compiz --replace) if you can't find the keys provided by Matttbe

matttbe, Wednesday 22 August 2012 à 14:13

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

fabounet :

Mate is currently the worst abomination on the Linux scene, because it breaks everything while provinding nothing new
better use XFCE then

I can understand the idea that some people don't want to totally change their desktop but they can also wait for new ideas or themes. Because it's a bit annoying to fork and rename so many projects to create Mate. It can remove the integration of Gnome in a lot of apps and it's not easy to help people when the names have changed...

izzo, Thursday 23 August 2012 à 01:52

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

No window manager installed, unless MATE comes with one already; mint 13 out of the box with MATE only.
also, I don't have gconf-editor nor mateconf-editor.

Also, I tweaked with the CD setting a little and "somehow" made the dock transparent...
However, it stays transparent ONLY whenever it feels like. Literally. Every now and then it will fall back to the black rectangle...
And I still cannot get it to pop ON TOP of fullscreen windows, it ONLY shows when all windows are minimized....

I agree with fabounet 1000%, MATE sucks; on mint 12 on my desktop with Gnome and compiz I had ZERO issues.
I would wipe mint 13 in a heartbeat and go back to 12 if it wasn't for all the software I have installed and so on...

P.S. How do I change the videocard drivers to the free ones? Kinda new to the whole MATE crap...
(Damn I miss the terminal only days!!!)

matttbe, Thursday 23 August 2012 à 02:16

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

How do I change the videocard drivers to the free ones?

You should use the free drivers by default (but I'm not sure because you're using Mint) but Iguess you should have a menu entry for all proprietary drivers.

For the transparency, can you try to install mateconf-editor (or gconf-editor) with the software-center?

Guest, Thursday 23 August 2012 à 02:39

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Just installed gconf-editor, and it starts when called in terminal.
mate-conf-editor WAS showing as installed in Synaptic, I re-installed it just in case, but it CAN NOT be started from terminal;
no such command.

Also, when I run Additional drivers I get this:
http://i.imgur.com/mntYI.png

matttbe, Thursday 23 August 2012 à 06:40

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

Yes it seems you're using non-free drivers.

Did you find a gconf key called 'compositing'?

taiebot65, Thursday 23 August 2012 à 19:34

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Subscription date : 26 October 2008
Messages : 1789

I would install xcompmgr
and just run it at start up. It's usually one dependency. It is not maintained anymore but does the job at running cairo-dock.

izzo, Friday 24 August 2012 à 03:45

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

mattbe: no key "compositing" in gconf-editor.

taiebot65: just installed xcompmgr, when I put it to run at startup and reboot CD won't even show up;
process is running, but when I hit the bottom of the screen it won't pop up...

matttbe, Friday 24 August 2012 à 07:41

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

And can you try to install and launch cairo-compmgr?

PS: if you doesn't like Mate, feel free to test a Cairo-Dock session (I'm not sure that it works on your distrib due to the changes made for Mate...) or XFCE

izzo, Friday 24 August 2012 à 19:18

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

mattbe: no go with compmgr...

./configure ends with this:

checking for CAIRO_COMPMGR... configure: error: Package requirements (xcomposite,
xdamage,
xext,
xi,
sm,
cairo >= 1.8.0,
pixman-1 >= 0.16.0,
gtk+-2.0 >= 2.16.0
vala-1.0 >= 0.7.10) were not met:

No package 'xcomposite' found
No package 'xdamage' found
No package 'xext' found
No package 'xi' found
No package 'sm' found
No package 'cairo' found
No package 'pixman-1' found
No package 'gtk+-2.0' found
No package 'vala-1.0' found

When I try to install the missing packages, I get this on all of them:

pimp cairo-compmgr-0.3.0 # apt-get install xcomposite
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done

matttbe, Friday 24 August 2012 à 22:02

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Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 11206

You need the '-dev' packages, e.g.: libxcomposite-dev, etc.

But you can also use this repo: http://cairo-compmgr.tuxfamily.org/download/debian-packages/

PS: if you want to compile it, it's maybe better to download the latest version from Git repo: http://git.tuxfamily.org/?p=ccm/cairocompmgr.git;a=snapshot;h=83e50c41239a6e25e839a0b5912d5e100b505ad3;sf=tgz

izzo, Monday 03 September 2012 à 23:00

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

Just installed libxcomposite-dev... Still no dice!!!

Reboot, CD runs but is nowhere to be found... Meaning - when I point to the bottom of the screen where I have it setup to pop, it does NOT.
Process is running.

fabounet, Tuesday 04 September 2012 à 16:43

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Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 16693

I think you activated the fake transparency (in the System options)
in which case, the dock stays behind windows, because it actually draws the wallpaper to simulate transparency

I think you should be able to have real transparency, so you should deactivate this option and try to install a proper window manager.
why not trying Compiz ? it's probably in the repositories and you can disable most of its plug-ins.
also, metacity can somewhat handle transparency (although not perfectly).

izzo, Tuesday 04 September 2012 à 23:55

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Subscription date : 21 August 2012
Messages : 6

You are right, fake transparency was enabled; I did disable it - and am facing yet another problem.
Once disabled, I rebooted and the good old problem persists: CD runs, however it stays hidden in a funky way:
when I point to the bottom of the screen, it DOES POP, BUT IT IS COMPLETELY INVISIBLE;
I only know it pops because when I righ-click in its area I get the right-click menu.

If I run compiz --replace (from terminal), CD WILL SHOW when I point to it with the mouse - NOT invisible.
Works fine for the most part, transparency and all, pops ABOVE all windows....d
HOWEVER (AGAIN!!!!) it will show a few times when pointed at with the mouse, then will go invisible "mode" again...

Another "side effect" - when compiz --replace is running, I lose the window decorations (where the window title is, and where the min/max close buttons are),
and also all my keyboard shortcuts...

This is becoming REALLY frustrating...

taiebot65, Wednesday 05 September 2012 à 19:30

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Subscription date : 26 October 2008
Messages : 1789

You need a window compositor while running cairo-dock. So compiz, xcompmgr or metacity needs to be running. If you do not have one cairo-dock will just look like this

http://uppix.net/8/5/e/5fb6983acbfd2ae1283017d7e431btt.jpg

It looks like the problem comes from compiz which might crashes or you might close the terminal containing the command

and cairo-dock disappear.

Would you try now with xcompmgr it should now work as well as compiz but you will not need a new window decorator and if you run this command at startup cairo-dock would stay up.

Unfortunately Compiz does not come with a windows decorator you need something like emerald but you might run into other trouble.
It might be available from your repository as a package.

fabounet, Thursday 13 September 2012 à 17:25

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Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 16693

XFWM also have compositing, but would probably bring too many dependencies

there is also a gtk-window-decorator, more basic than Emerald.

Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation

	Subjects	Author	Language	Messages	Last message
	v3.0.0 transparency not working, any ideas?	izzo	English	18	fabounet [Read] 13 September 2012 à 17:25

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Glx-Dock / Cairo-Dock List of forums Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation v3.0.0 transparency not working, any ideas?

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