[M7] (32MB) notification messages are not readable

This is an issue with the driver xserver-xorg-video-ati. I reassign this against xserver-xorg-driver-ati.

driver issue, not notify-osd related

Thanks for your report. I can not reproduce on an X700. I use the volume buttons to trigger the notifications, I suppose they are the same?

Simon, can you try making an /etc/X11/xorg.conf with these contents:

 Section "Device"
  Identifier "test"
  Driver "ati"
  Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
 EndSection

and see how it works after restarting X (log out and in again).

This settings does not fix the problem. The notification messages are still messy. However this fixed the flash plugin problem. Before this the flash videos flickered but not any more.

Probably this bug reported by me is also caused by the video driver: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/445737

What any other settings can I try?

It doesn't matter if Visual Effects are on or off, what I want is a stable system with readable notification messages and a non flickering flash plugin :-)

"man exa" list some different EXA options that might help for the flash problem. But if the original issue here is still present with XAA, those options will not help.

I guess Option "NoAccel" "true" will fix it but it will be unbearable slow.

I suspect you're running out of video memory. Try reducing the depth to 16, or specify a virtual display size just as large as your resolution (see man xorg.conf).

Yes, probably the video memory was not enough. With Visual effects = Normal and the following xorg.conf I don't have any problems:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "laptop_device"
 Driver "ati"
 #Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
 EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "laptop_screen"
 Device "laptop_device"
 DefaultColorDepth 16

 SubSection "Display"
  Depth 16
  Virtual 1024 768
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Does not mather if the acceleration method is XAA or EXA. Both are good.

I had problem playing videos with totem but in a bug tracker I found the solution how to set the gstreamer-properties for a good result.

No freezes for a while, notification messages are readable. Thanks for helping me out. This bug can be closed.

Does it work fine if your xorg.conf only has this, thus only limiting the virtual display size?

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "laptop_screen"
 SubSection "Display"
  Virtual 1024 768
 EndSubSection
EndSection

I would still consider this to be a bug, but it is being improved in the newest drivers with the use of a memory manager which can distribute the video RAM in a more flexible way.

With this configuration X is defaulting to 24 bpp. The only problem what I found with this configuration is that if I start Rhythmbox and after that I start Totem to play a video I got the following error:

The program 'totem' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 68 error_code 11 request_code 132 minor_code 19)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

If first I start Totem then Rhythmbox no problem.

I will come back in a few days with the stability of the system.

Hi, I had the same problem. I switched to EXA, as using a smaller Virtual screen or color dpeth isn't really a solution (I use a dual-head setup with one 22" display and don't want to miss half the colors). EXA solved the problem of unreadable notifications, but messed up display performance (as discussed in #363238 [though that discussion targeted on Jaunty]).
I'm quite at a loss now, as unreadable notifications are not a nice thing, but having to wait several seconds until Firefox (or any other program) scrolls a few rows is unbearable as well. This clearly is a regression from Jaunty as there, XAA worked like a charm.

(using Thinkpad T30 with ATI Radeon M7 LW, like the author)

you can use xfce4-notifyd until this is fixed
i know it's not too nice, but still, it's a workaround