KDE 5: Compositor not properly enabled on startup

[teefax]

Hi,

last week I updated my system to the lasted KDE version (Plasma 5.6.5 / Frameworks 5.23.0 / Qt 5.6.1) and now the "Enable compositor on startup" option is no longer working properly. If enabled, the transparency/shadows/animations for the windows are working but not for the Plasma menu and taskbar (tried with any combination of OpenGL 3.1/2.0 and GLX/EGL).

As a workaround I can leave the compositor disabled, restart plasma and then go to the compositor settings, change something and hit apply which will enable the effects for the windows but again the shadows/transparency for the task bar / application menu / etc. are missing. If I then change something again and hit apply a second time the compositor is working as intended and all the transparency and effects are displayed properly. However, this does not work if the compositor was set to be enabled on startup.

Has anyone else experienced this? I had no issues with Plasma 5.6.4 / Frameworks 5.22.0 / Qt 5.6.0.

Edit: To make it more clear what I mean, here is how it currently looks like and here how it is supposed to look like (after applying the mentioned workaround).

[asturm]

yeah I'm seeing something similar, it often works, but then often it does not.

[IvanMajhen]

Same here. If I kill plasmashell and start it again from krunner, shadows and transparency works.

I think that the error is from plasma-workspace package. If I use plasma-workspace-5.6.4 then it always works.

Kwin compositing is always working, just no transpareny or shadows.

[Pryka]

Same here.

But there is actually an easy workaround. After KDE start, just do alt+shift+F12 to start compositor.

[asturm]

@Pryka: Did you also observe this on workspace-5.6.5 upgrade?

[Pryka]

@genstorm yes.

[asturm]

What kernel version and graphics driver do you use?

[IvanMajhen]

It looks like we are hitting this bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364641

[Pryka]

[asturm]

No relation then. Strange, I haven't had the problem since upgrading from 4.6.1 to 4.6.3, using Intel. May or may not be coincidence... EDIT: just happened again.

[IvanMajhen]

[gorg86]

I have the same problem, vsync is also lost sometimes.

[asturm]

[IvanMajhen]

I tried to bisect the problem with kdiiff3 (plasma-workspace) and there are some little changes. I've been trying for about 2-3 hours with different permutation off diffs but couldn't find which combination of diffs is responsible for shadows/transparency not showing.

If I remove whole plasma-workspace after ebuild unpack and replace it with 5.6.4 version and edit cmake to 5.6.5 I have always good plasma startup. With plasma-workspace 5.6.5 I have 99% chances of bad startup.

Can you confirm that with 5.6.4 plasma-workspace startup is good?

Edit: 5.6.4 now also fails, disregard this.

[gorg86]

If you kill plasmashell after the startup and then start it again then the transparency works. Maybe it helps pinpointing the bug?

[asturm]

Not necessary at all, just press Shit+Alt+F12 twice to re-enable compositing.

[gorg86]

Well that key-combo doesn't work for me, it switches to console and when I switch back X/plasma crashed and I have to start it again with startx anyway.

edit:
Just tried it and it works now.

edit2:
Just rebooted and tested it. That key combo doesn't activate transparency if it was broken when it started up. You have to kill it and restart it like I wrote.

[asturm]

You press it twice. Disable compositing, then enable it back. If that shortcut doesn't work for you, do it from within systemsettings/compositor settings.

[gorg86]

It works, it restarts the compositor, but it doesn't give me transparency.

[asturm]

I discovered it wouldn't work for me either right after start. It's like that race condition is causing a delay or timeout, and only until after 30-60 seconds the panel actually manages to pick up transparency on compositor restart.

[gorg86]

This and some other bugs were enough to bug the c*** out of me so I downgraded to stable plasma-5.5.5

[asturm]

Please describe 'some other bugs'. How do you expect to get them solved before 5.6.5 stabilisation without reports?

[gorg86]

The bugs I had are known and are being worked on, no need to make duplicate threads to annoy the moderators.

[asturm]

Well, in terms of bugzilla nothing is blocking Plasma 5.6.5 stabilisation right now (save for kf-5.23 and qt-5.6.1 which need to happen before).

EDIT: Speaking of which, what version of KDE Frameworks do you have installed?

[Pryka]

5.7.0 still got this...