[GRLUG] Block characters in gnome-termina after changing video card

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 11:09 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Adam Tauno WIlliams
> <awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> > I have a workstation (P4, 1GB RAM) that had rather crappy performance,
> > especially in anything related to video;  scrolling a terminal window or
> > web page in firefox was simply frustrating.  So I replaced the nvidia
> > Vanta 16 AGP card that was in the machine with an nvidia GeForce 8400GS
> > PCI (512MB DDR2/567MHz core).  Configuring the card was a breeze and X
> > came right back up.  Now, even with compiz/xgl turned on, the
> > performance is really good for a box of this vintage.
> That's sad; It implies we're spending more computation power on
> presentation than on utility. I wonder how much energy could be saved
> from reducing the computational requirements of modern GUI systems.

Good presentation is utility.  Compared to the LINUX desktop of even a
few years ago - I'm more than happy to pay for the additional energy.
Features like document thumbnails, window transparency, and
componentized user interfaces definitely increase my productivity as
both a user and developer.

> > In gnome-terminal the the characters I type on the command line randomly
> > appear as blocks rather than characters.  Then when I hit enter, or even
> > just click in the window, they suddenly appear.  As if what I'm seeing
> > is an artifact of the cursor block.  Characters coming from the system
> > (command output, etc...) never appear as blocked, just the ones I type
> > on the command line,  Crufty old xterm doesn't have the problem and
> > neither does any other application (evolution, etc...)
> What happens if you disable compiz and xgl again?  If the problem goes
> away, I would be inclined to think it's a video driver bug. 

I *think* the problem was not present before XGL was enabled, I'll
double check.

> Are you using the open-source drivers or NVidia's driver?

The NVidia driver; I briefly see the NVidia logo when X starts and the
NVidia-GNOME utilities seem to work.