Short
On Xubuntu 14.04 running on a Inspiron i3531-1200BK laptop , the xfce log-in screen only renders 2/3s of the screen, but issue is not present for xfce desktop after logging in. Issue also exists with other 3d applications. How can I fix this?
Longer
I'm going to list everything I know about this laptop which is running XUbuntu 14.04 on Dell Inspiron i3531-1200BK.
The log in screen only renders 2/3s of the screen. After log in this fixes itself with a much of random-looking graphics resizing. I thought this was weird, but since it only existed on the log in screen I ignored it at first. This issue has been present since installing Xubuntu.
After about 3 weeks of owning this device, and updating when it xubuntu every update, I found that even with the default install setting (I think LVM was actually also checked if that matters) I could not update the OS because of having less than 1mb of extra space. Since I did the default partitioning, with entire 500gb HDD and still greater than 400gb still free, I was surprised. I then used
dpkg -l linux-* | awk '/^ii/{ print $2}' | grep -v -e `uname -r | cut -f1,2 -d"-"` | grep -e [0-9] | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge
based on askubuntu help (I don't recall which, I just got that from the terminal past commands log) from someone else's Question. This seemed to let the updates go though, but uninstalled g++ and other things which I had to reinstall later. I don't know if this messed stuff up more, but the log in graphics issues predate it.
After installing Oracle VM Virtualbox, I noticed if I use 3D graphics acceleration the same thing happens if I go from FULLSCREEN mode to SCALED mode I get the same issue. Instead of turning to normal scaled mode it takes up 2/3 the screen and cannot seem to be put back to fullscreen mode. Interestingly (and frustratingly) it also looses the ability for the mouse to work. I had thought the machine froze, but noticed I could TAB through stuff on the VM. After pressing the HOST key, and then ALT + TAB , I noticed that the VM was now treated as two programs in addition to the virtualbox config/launcher window.
This seems to be an issue with lots of 3d things.
I'm not sure what you gals/guys need to know more (likely from terminal), but if you let me know, I will run them and update this.
$ uname -a
Linux user 3.13.0-37-generic #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:28:38 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
glxgears seems to run but when I close it using the 'x' button on the window, it crashes
$ glxgears
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0.0"
after 380 requests (380 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
PS This may or may not be useful too: Only other bug I am aware of is that for some reason the wifi password dialog box only allows for logging into wifi that uses specific number of characters, eg. 6 character passwords grey out the OK button and cannot be used but 5 or 7 character passwords are OK.
