Ubuntu – Unity in 12.10 comes up behind other windows

12.10compizunity

I've just upgraded from 12.04 to 12.10. For the most part, everything works fine, but I have a few small problems with Unity, or maybe Compiz.

When I hit the Super key, or click on the dash launcher, the dash sometimes comes up behind the other windows on the screen. As you can imagine, this makes it somewhat tricky to use.

Once it has started coming up behind, no amount of trying again will convince it to come back to the front.

Possibly related, the Alt-Tab switcher doesn't show either. It maybe that there isn't one, or maybe that's behind also? Alt-Tab does switch the windows, but there's no visual indicator.

When I hit Super-W, the windows do all do the zoom thing, but it's slow and juddery where it used to be smooth in 12.04.

I'm using the standard "radeon" driver, same as before, with a triple-head monitor setup (and that works fine). I've not tried the proprietary drivers as I've previously found the multi-monitor support much weaker than the default driver, but maybe that's the way to go now?

Video play fine. Even WebGL seems ok.

Do other see this problem? Is it a bug? Or have I just got some left-over config from 12.04 in the way?

Best Answer

TL;DR: disable and re-enable unity plugin in CCSM.

Walkthrough

(optional) if you have compiz config setting manager then issue

apt-get update && apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
Launch ccsm (either on command line or through dash)
Then use the search box and type "unity"
click on the plugin
on the left part you can uncheck box to disable unity
re-enable unity by re-checking the box.

Note: This answer was in a comment of the lengthy unrelated accepted answer.

Note2: This answer works for the current session but won't fix definitively the issue

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Show all open windows in 11.04

Super+W can do it but if you want to add Mouse Gestures to it, Like Gnome 3 you can do the following:

(as pointed out in comments)

Install Compiz Settings Manager
Run it, Go to Commands under General
Set Command 0 in Edge Bindings and come back to "Command" tab
Enter "xdotool key Super_L+w" in Command Line 0
Install package xdotool

Ubuntu – configure the glow color of the alt-tab switcher

I don't know of any way to change the colour of the alt+tab switcher in Unity, but you can use an alternative in Compiz. Let us look at the alternatives:

Before we start:

Create a nautilus script to reload Unity when ever it crashes:

Create a text file called "unityreloader" (no file extension).
Place this text in it:

 #!/bin/sh
 unity

Mark the file as executable and place it in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
When ever you make a change in CCSM that causes Unity to exit, simply right click on the Desktop, choose scripts, and click unityreloader. This will restart Unity so you don't have to log out and back in.

Install the extra Compiz Plugins: Compiz-Plugins-Extra .

Shift-Switcher:

Shift This plugin is not perfect, but it is rather aesthetically pleasing. By default, it will have some minor conflicts, so you will need to change the keyboard shortcuts. Please not that any keyboard shortcut using super will probably cause problems or fail to work because Unity uses this for many actions.

Ring-Switcher:

Ring Similar to the Shift-Switcher, however by default it exits when you release the shortcut key.

Scale:

Scale If configured correctly, Scale can be used to show all windows on the workspace (or all workspaces). enter image description here

NB:

The following two caused Compiz to lock up on me when I enabled them (though they work after logging out and back in again) - use at your own risk:

Application Switcher and Static Application Switcher:

The most basic of all, these two are similar to the default app switcher, but show text colours correctly. enter image description here

Related Question