[SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

dontbugme · 2013-04-26 04:14:55

If I check "have file manager handle the desktop" then I lose my background image and get a white screen instead.

Right clicking the screen and going to the wallpaper settings shows my wallpaper as being there, and being the right one. But the background is, of course, white.

Changing the shell theme to default doesn't help. What to do?

Last edited by dontbugme (2013-04-26 20:56:12)

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-26 04:41:34

Well, first i would say - search the forums before posting, since you may not be the only one who has ran into this.

have a look here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=161918

My desktop was black (not white), but i am also using compiz not gnome-shell... I'm not the O.P in that thread, but that thread does contain multiple possible workarounds/fixes to the issue...

dontbugme · 2013-04-26 12:49:40

Ya I saw that. Marked "solved".

It's not solved. It is a big ugly error, and the "multiple workarounds" are useless.

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-26 20:29:25

dontbugme wrote:

Ya I saw that. Marked "solved".
It's not solved. It is a big ugly error, and the "multiple workarounds" are useless.

well, everyone else was able to work around this problem and without any additional information, i don't see how you expect anyone to help you.

- out of those 'useless workarounds' - which did you try (?) and were you able to get a background/wallpaper in any of your attempts?

- Have you set all of your theming to default settings? (ie: gtk+ to adwaita shipped with 3.8, not just default shell theme).

EDIT:

Additionally, have you filed and/or investigated if their are any bug reports against Gnome (GS or nautilus?) that may have been filed???

check archlinux bug tracker, as well).

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2013-04-26 20:51:58)

dontbugme · 2013-04-26 20:50:27

Ok, that was it. It wasn't the shell theme that had to be changed, it was gtk+.

Thanks.

Last edited by dontbugme (2013-04-26 20:55:42)

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-26 21:02:36

dontbugme wrote:

Go back and read my first post.
Your input isn't really relevant, though. As you said, you're not even running gnome shell.

but i can, and if you were a little more interested in posting relevant information (like even answering a few of the questions, i have posted concisely, i very well might be able to help you fix your issues...

- i am running GS, as we speak. (didn't even log out, killed compiz and nemo, loaded GS and nautilus 3.8 - to clarify).

it's probably your (gtk+) theme;

I just tested a few themes that i have installed, most have black/grey/white backgrounds with 3.8. adwaita doesn't, my own theme doesn't (although it slightly darkened the wallpaper, probably due to some alpha value in my gtk theme set) and zukitwo worked too. the rest seemed buggered.

EDIT: you'll also note that in the other thread on this subject - someone else changed gtk+ theme and it worked fine.

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2013-04-26 21:05:19)

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-26 21:18:58

dontbugme wrote:

Ok, that was it. It wasn't the shell theme that had to be changed, it was gtk+.
Thanks.

Your welcome.

btw, you didn't need to be so rude, nor edit/replace that post (i quoted it anyway). My input was VERY relevant, being as i was someone taking the time to help you, and someone who is somewhat familiar with several components of the gnome DE (i maintain personal fork of gnome-system-monitor, my own gtk2/gtk3/metacity/emerald/cinnamon theme, few bug reports here and there, etc), regardless of whether or not i use Gnome-Shell on a day to day basis.

anyway, i am glad we got it figured out. hopefully all of the good gtk+ themes get updated quickly

dcarros · 2013-04-27 18:25:09

I have read this and the thread referenced below. This is NOT solved and I believe the problem is NOT properly diagnosed. My problem was identical to the symptoms described. With select background images (using various themes) the background was a blank white (in my case). The default themes worked fine regardless of background. However, I noticed that if I turned off Nautilus for painting/controlling the screen my Icons went away and my background came back. Further, If I installed Nemo (which I prefer anyway) the icons returned and any theme displayed the background of my choice correctly. It is unclear whether the problem is Nautilus or the themes compatability with Gnome 3.8 or Gnome 3.8 itself that is the problem. It would be nice to see if others can reproduce my experiences so we can narrow down the culprit(s). I am not confident a trouble ticket is in order yet as I cannot pinpoint the problem.

I also believe the two threads should be combined so as not to promote further confusion.

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-27 20:02:09

dcarros wrote:

I have read this and the thread referenced below. This is NOT solved and I believe the problem is NOT properly diagnosed. My problem was identical to the symptoms described. With select background images (using various themes) the background was a blank white (in my case). The default themes worked fine regardless of background. However, I noticed that if I turned off Nautilus for painting/controlling the screen my Icons went away and my background came back. Further, If I installed Nemo (which I prefer anyway) the icons returned and any theme displayed the background of my choice correctly. It is unclear whether the problem is Nautilus or the themes compatability with Gnome 3.8 or Gnome 3.8 itself that is the problem. It would be nice to see if others can reproduce my experiences so we can narrow down the culprit(s). I am not confident a trouble ticket is in order yet as I cannot pinpoint the problem.
I also believe the two threads should be combined so as not to promote further confusion.

You're probably right about merging threads - but that is upto a TU to do. On the question of whether or not this has been [SOLVED] in this case, yes it has been. The user's gtk+ theme was not compatible with gnome 3.8, there are many themes that are not.

Now, on the nautilus bit.

- As i have pointed out in both threads, nautilus no longer paints the wallpaper in 3.8 - it only paints a transparent window, GS paints the wallpaper behind it (which is probably what causes the incompatibility black/white window in gtk+ theme). It's also the reason why when you turn nautilus off, your background returns (because GS handles wallpaper) and nautilus was blocking it by not painting a transparent window.

- Nemo is based on nautilus *3.6* - in 3.6 nautilus doesn't paint a transparent window -> it paints the background for nautilus/desktop (but note: at this point GS in 3.8 would also be painting wallpaper behind that).

So there is no confusion here between nautilus and nemo, none at all - one does not handle painting wallpaper (nautilus), while the other one does handle painting dekstop wallpaper (nemo).

from my perspective, this appears to not be a bug, but rather a given gtk+ theme must be ported to 3.8.

that being said, if you have a working gtk+ 3.8 theme and nautilus 3.8 (not nemo) painting the desktop correctly - then you could try to switching through a few GS themes, allowing you to rule out GS theming as having any influence. Which would essentially verify that this is a gtk+ theme problem...

my only problem, is that i have not been able to identify any code in any gtk+ theme that i have that hints at the cause, but it may also be the gtk+ engine that has the bug - this i don't know.

dcarros · 2013-04-27 21:38:45

You might want to have a look at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-gnome/+bug/1159430

They seem to be as confused as we are. My take of the conversation is that when Gnome developers removed "background" support from Nautilus in 3,8 they forgot to ask which project was going to pick up setting the background. I'm predicting they will have to roll it back into Nautilus otherwise Compiz, Metacity, Unity will all need solutions too. If the goal is to use gsettings then let it be so. But, they appeared surprised to find the gsettings demon for painting the background missing in Gnome 3.8. In a commercial release this would be called a feature and in OpenSource the term "fubar" comes to mind. :-)

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-27 23:22:33

dcarros wrote:

You might want to have a look at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-gnome/+bug/1159430
They seem to be as confused as we are. My take of the conversation is that when Gnome developers removed "background" support from Nautilus in 3,8 they forgot to ask which project was going to pick up setting the background. I'm predicting they will have to roll it back into Nautilus otherwise Compiz, Metacity, Unity will all need solutions too. If the goal is to use gsettings then let it be so. But, they appeared surprised to find the gsettings demon for painting the background missing in Gnome 3.8. In a commercial release this would be called a feature and in OpenSource the term "fubar" comes to mind. :-)

thanks for the link - it highlights the problem line in gtk+ themes causing the desktop to be drawn black/white, which is handy to know. I already knew about unity-on-arch branch of nautilus (which reverts RGBA/transparency commit in nautilus), but the compiz work is of interest + the links/reference is good to have.

I don't know why they are surprised though - Gnome has covered themselves in their desktop, they are not responsivble for Unity, compiz and others who may want to use Gnome in a non-standard way. (this includes 2d 'flashback mode' too, since upstream gnome doesn't support it directly). Mutter/GS do the right things / handle the desktop properly.

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2013-04-27 23:23:42)

dcarros · 2013-04-28 21:04:33

OK, so lets add one more item to the pile affected by Nautilus, GKRellm. I honestly thought this problem was unrelated. It appears that is not the case. Today (for various unrelated reasons) I rebooted my machine and GLRellm now works. I spent days trying to find out why it was not working. I finally threw in the towel and fired up Conky and wrote a script to configure it the way I liked. Today, I rebooted and GKRellm (which was configured to autostart) came up. It appears that removing Nautilus and replacing it with Nemo fixed the problem with GKRellm too, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest there are a lot more programs affected by this change.

Who'd a thunk it?

triplesquarednine · 2013-04-28 23:20:21

@dcarros

It's not that surprising because GKRellm was probably being rendered behind the nautilus desktop window (which wasn't transparent on your machine, as it is supposed to be) and/or their was a stacking issue, due to the changes in nautilus. (much link the compiz issue with wallpaper plugin - which there is now a compiz branch for).

I doubt a whole lot of apps are borken because of this, only those which may expect 'old' nautilus handling of the desktop. so, maybe a handful of desktop widget type apps.

trusktr · 2013-05-21 09:05:10

@triplesquarednine I tried setting my GTK+ theme to the default Adwaita, but the background is still hidden by nautilus. Do you recommend a theme I can try?

EDIT 7/21/13: I'm gonna try Nemo, or some other alternative to Nautilus.

Last edited by trusktr (2013-07-21 08:15:07)

trusktr · 2013-07-21 09:58:59

I tried using Nemo for desktop management, but that didn't solve the problem in my case (I'm using Metacity, not Gnome Shell). I noticed that if I run Nemo inside Gnome Shell, then it'll display a background, but not when Nemo runs with Metacity. I'm still looking for a solution for the Metacity environment.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-04-26 04:14:55

[SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#2 2013-04-26 04:41:34

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#3 2013-04-26 12:49:40

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#4 2013-04-26 20:29:25

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#5 2013-04-26 20:50:27

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#6 2013-04-26 21:02:36

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#7 2013-04-26 21:18:58

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#8 2013-04-27 18:25:09

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#9 2013-04-27 20:02:09

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#10 2013-04-27 21:38:45

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#11 2013-04-27 23:22:33

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#12 2013-04-28 21:04:33

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#13 2013-04-28 23:20:21

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#14 2013-05-21 09:05:10

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

#15 2013-07-21 09:58:59

Re: [SOLVED] [GNOME 3.8] Nautilus not drawing background

Board footer