Xdamage settings with Nvidia

Question

Something I've put up with for a seemingly long time (it could be months, it could be years) is that sometimes the screen doesn't update properly when something happens. Some examples:

• Some tooltips just show the area of text, not the border or drop-sahdow.
• Some tooltips just show the drop-shadow(!)
• Menus are a common issue. I often need to move my mouse around to get the items to show up.

At least in VNC terms, this would me known as a screen "damage" problem but I'm not using VNC. Something in the graphics stack isn't redrawing the screen when a change has been made.

Some notes about my configuration:

• Nvidia GTX 580, binary driver (304.30 from xorg-edgers). The beta driver is a red herring. I've had this problem in the stable versions of everything too.
• Two monitors in one Twinview screen
• Compiz but not Unity.
• No /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration at all.

Any suggestions on where to start looking to fix this? Are there any magical nvidia configs I can test to make this work?

Answer 1

Well it turns out the fix for this is just one checkbox. Load up CCSM (that's compizconfig-settings-manager) and just enable the Animations plugin.

I'm not certain but I think that's causing things to be drawn more slowly (through various animated tweens) so X/Nvidia notices the change. That's my hypothesis and I'm sticking with it.

Anyway. I'm happy.