[clue] Ubuntu Oneiric - title bar weirdness

[Lorin Ricker]

I've been having the same (or related) problem for several months now... 
It just "showed up" after some unknown update, I'd imagine.  On 10.04 
Lucid: it happens that, whenever I login to my "main account", my 
windows title-bars are missing.

Right-click on desktop background, select Change Desktop Background to 
bring up "Appearance Preferences", click on Visual Effects tab -- There 
I find that, every time, the "None: Provides a simple desktop 
environment without any effects." is selected.

So, with each login, I have to go here and (re)click "Normal:...", which 
makes the Window Manager go out and hunt for "drivers"; once found, it 
redecorates windows with title bars, etc., asks me if I want to "Keep 
new (current) settings?" -- I always say "Yes", and things are back to 
normal... until the next reboot &/or login.  The "Normal" setting does 
not stick.

As this happens only in my main account, I have to believe that 
something's gone unpredictably and unfindably wonky with a .hidden_file 
Xorg setting... or something similar.  It's a real PITA to have to "fix" 
this on every login.

As I'm planning to do a bare-metal reinstall/upgrade to 12.04 (yes, 
maybe even acquiescing to Unity), I'll likely leave this problem behind 
in a few days or weeks, upgrade schedule permitting.

Just another data point for comparison.  I've a real hunch that relying 
on XML-formatted data files for configuration is at the core of this 
problem -- that really subtle and un-diagnosable bugs/corruption can 
creep into ad-hoc XML syntaxes for keeping track of config-info. Can't 
prove it, or even find such problems, as such on-the-fly data structures 
are usually pretty much undocumented, even to the developers.

edv -- If Alt+Spacebar makes title bars go away, does anything bring 
them back or toggle them?

-- Lorin


On 05/10/2012 04:34 PM, edv wrote:
> I finally manged to reproduce this "weirdness"
> left alt + spacebar seems to cause the title bars to go away.
>
>>   From: edv<ezedtheamerican at gmail.com>
>> To: clue at cluedenver.org
>> Sent: Thursday, May 3, 2012 10:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [clue] Ubuntu Oneiric - title bar weirdness
>>
>> I have encountered the same problem ( I am using GNOME 2.32.1 )
>> I asked about it on my distro's forum about a year ago and didn't get a
>> response.
>> The issue is intermittent and I haven't taken the time to figure out
>> what causes it.
>> I am running compiz as well...
>>
>> On Thu, 2012-05-03 at 21:18 -0600, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
>>> I am not quite sure how to quantify this, but I keep losing my title bars. I have to run gtk-window-decorator to get them back.
>>>
>>> Any ideas on how to fix this? I may end up going to fluxbox once I can figure out how to config it for dual monitors, but it'd be nice to use gnome, as well.
>>>
>>> I can get versions/config info if needed.