KDE CentOS 7-Artefacts and screen smudging

[buchalkalan]

I am using CentOS 7.1.1503 (Core) 64 bits with KDE desktop (4.10.5). My KDE desktop is behaving in a real strange manner. When I click the Start menu, entries start to disappear, fonts appear smudged and so on. I followed the syslog with tail -f /var/log/messages and here is an excerpt from the output

Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
Oct 16 13:20:39 support2 /etc/gdm/Xsession: QPainter::setCompositionMode: Painter not active

I got a feeling that this problem is somehow related to GDM and wanted to switch to KDM. I couldn't find KDM in standard repositories. yum search kdm does not provide anything.

Please let me know if the above problem sounds familiar and you have some solution to offer. Alternatively, let me know how can I switch from GDM to KDM. Furthermore, if KDM is removed from CentOS, why is it so.

[TrevorH]

What sort of graphics adapter do you have? The output of lspci -nn | grep -i vga would probably tell us.

[buchalkalan]

Here is the output

Code: Select all

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0412] (rev 06)

[buchalkalan]

Never mind. At least I found the reason why it happens. It has something to do with the open source Java development kit (java-1.7.0-openjdk and headless package). It happens only when I am running a certain Java based application. I installed Oracle Java 8.0 alongside the open source JDK and switched the Java JDK with alternatives command. The problem goes away. I update the thread as it may help someone facing the similar issue.