Having ghosting and tearing with the i3 window manager paired with xcompgmr when tiling terminals vertically

i3window titlewindow-manager

I'm using the i3 tiling window manager. As it doesn't do compositing, I've enabled the xcompmgr compositor in my ~/.i3/config file as well as feh to display a wallpaper:

exec --no-startup-id xcompmgr -c -C -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55
exec feh --bg-scale ~/Downloads/Arch-Linux-Bluewave.jpg

Now lxterminal supports translucency etc. but when I arrange my terminals vertically, some ghosting, tearing and decoration artifacts from other workspaces appear to the top right – and disappear as soon as the window is tiled horizontally. Furthermore, when transmission-gtk "floats" a dialog box, moving that box around leaves ghosting in the form of tiny horizontal lines which remain until some refresh.

Is there any workaround?

Best Answer

The symptoms arise from two distinct issues here:

  1. The compositor: use something more recent like Compton in this case, with the following last options if supported by your hardware:

    exec --no-startup-id compton -cCGb --backend glx --vsync opengl

  2. The fact that compositors are not officially supported by this window manager and because of the way i3 renders window title bars. A well-known workaround is to disable such title bars by adding to ~/.i3/config:

    new_window pixel

To move around a floating window with no titlebar, use mod+drag anywhere on it. Finally, some of this may change over time.

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