Black windows on gnome 3.2

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1

Hi guys, Im new on here and new to openSUSE and Linux.

As the title suggests I have a problem with windows in Gnome. Im using openSUSE 21.1 installed from a 4.7gb DVD

I partitioned my hard disk and downloaded openSUSE 12.1. Install went fine.

Upon boot everything seemed ok. I connected to wireless ok. However when I open applications e.g. Firefox, I am presented with an entirely black window with the tab shown next to “Activities”.

Anyone know what the problem is?

How can I access the terminal? Xterm is presented as an entirely blank, black window…

After googling it seems disabling desktop effects might help. How would I go about this? Remember Im a linux newbie!

Any help is appreciated

2

Well …black windows are not as dangerous as black widows … But what’s your graphic card? Gnome 3 won’t work with any graphics card or any driver or driver version. Sometimes installing the proprietary driver will help or make it worse, and sometimes you’ll have to stick to fallback mode or use another desktop.

3

^
Yeah at least my desktops not full of spiders!

Cheers for the reply, my graphics card is at the older end of the scale: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7500

I have noticed on the boot screen says:

unable to boot using rtc (rtc0)

creating device nodes using udev

try maunal resume from…

dont know how to copy it sorry.

Is that the issue? Also how can I disable the gnome desktop effects? I have read this may solve the problem.

Can I switch to KDE without reinstalling everything?

Thanks!

4

UPDATE!

It appears you’re correct. I launched suse in failsafe; when the desktop loaded it recieved a message saying GNOME could not start properly and will not deliver the full gnome experience due to graphics card…or something to that effect. Now that gnome has partially failed I dont see black windows… or widows!

So should I switch to KDE?

Or sould I try stopping gnomes desktop effects?

5

Either or.
Or maybe you can copy - as root - the text below in the file /usr/share/xsessions/gnome-fallback.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME Classic (No effects)
Comment=This session logs you into GNOME with the traditional panel without any graphical effect.
Exec=gnome-session --session=gnome-fallback
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application

and login into “GNOME Classic (No effects)”.

6

On 2012-04-24 15:36, please try again wrote:

> and login into “GNOME Classic (No effects)”.

Nice trick!

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

7

Solved!

Cheers for the help. I reinstalled with XFCE. I prefer the feel of it and it runs very smoothly. I can hardly believe my laptops running this fast!

No going back to windows now…I’ve given SUSE the whole drive!

Just got to get to grips with the shell commands now…

8

On 2012-04-25 12:36, lkzp wrote:
>
> Solved!
>
> Cheers for the help. I reinstalled with XFCE. I prefer the feel of it
> and it runs very smoothly. I can hardly believe my laptops running this
> fast!

Reinstalled? Why? This is not Windows, you can have as many desktops
simultaneously installed. You can have many users and each of them use a
different desktop. Or use one on Mondays and another on Sundays…

And if you really want to remove one desktop, do so, but don’t reinstall,
just remove it.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)