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#1 2016-12-03 19:05:19

Me@Work
Member
Registered: 2016-10-03
Posts: 10

Flicker issues with conky and i3 window manager

Hello!


It's only recently that I switched to i3 window manager. At some point my configuration does not fit exactly my needs. One issue is, that on i3 conky flickers continuously. On my old setup nearly the same conky configuration hasn't shown this irritating behaviour.

The relevant part of my conky configuration file (cf. http://i3wm.org/docs/user-contributed/conky-i3bar.html):

$ cat ~/.config/conky.conf
conky.config = {
    alignment = 'top_right',
    background = false,
    default_color = 'white',
    double_buffer = true,
    font = 'Monospace:size=12',
    gap_x = 30,
    gap_y = 60,
    maximum_width = 480,
    out_to_console = true,
    out_to_stderr = false,
    own_window = false,
    short_units = true,
    update_interval = 1.0,
    use_spacer = 'right',
    use_xft = true,
    color0 = 'white',
    color1 = 'grey'
}

conky.text = [[
    ...
]]

That's how I start conky:

$ cat ~/.config/i3/config | grep conky
exec_always --no-startup-id conky ~/.config/conky.conf

Without the variable "use_spacer" in the conky configuration file the flicker issue improves slightly, but is still present and noticeable. As longer as conky is running, as more the flicker issue worsen. After a couple of minutes only fragments of the output are visible, no matter I go with or without the "use_spacer" variable. Beside i3 and conky I've also xcompmgr installed. How can I fix that?

Additionally conky or i3 show another unintended behaviour in combination with my terminal terminator. The background of terminator is semi-transparent and on my old desktop environment the conky output has shined through terminator. On i3 conky seems to vanish if a window moves in place. Is it possible to prevent this behaviour, so my conky output shines through terminator?


Matthew

Last edited by Me@Work (2016-12-04 07:22:34)

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#2 2016-12-03 19:19:16

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: Flicker issues with conky and i3 window manager

Your link is 404.
What video card are you using?
Have you tried a compositor like compton   ?


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
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#3 2016-12-04 07:24:13

Me@Work
Member
Registered: 2016-10-03
Posts: 10

Re: Flicker issues with conky and i3 window manager

Hello!


ewaller wrote:

Your link is 404.

Fixed.

ewaller wrote:

What video card are you using?

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108GLM [NVS 5200M] (rev a1)

It is an nVidia card of a notebook.

ewaller wrote:

Have you tried a compositor like compton?

Not yet.

Update: Now I switched from the nouveau (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?nam … eo-nouveau) graphics card driver to the nvidia driver (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia, https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia-libgl), that improved it somehow:

$ pacman -S nvidia nvidia-libgl
$ sed -i 's/MODULES=""/MODULES="nvidia"/g' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
$ mkinitcpio -p linux

If I use the built-in display and one of the external monitors conky works fine on the built-in display and quite acceptable on the external monitor. Turning off the built-in display and using both external monitors (graphics card supports only two monitors at the same time) conky is flickering, vanishing and doing not well. That it is how I change my monitor setup:

$ xrandr --output LVDS-0 --off --output DP-0 --auto --right-of DP-1 --primary --output DP-1 --auto

It seems to be more a graphics card and/or graphics card driver (configuration) issue. Ideas?


Matthew

Last edited by Me@Work (2016-12-04 09:34:36)

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