LinuxQuestions.org - Dead area at bottom of maximised windows

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Dead area at bottom of maximised windows

If I maximise any Window in Cinnamon, there's an unclickable area about 50 pixels high at the base of the Window.

For example, if I maximise Chrome and a page has a horizontal scroll bar, it means I cannot use the scrollbar without unmaximising the Window.

It appears to do this on all apps. I've not found anyone else with any similar problems when Googling. The problem is persistent and rebooting doesn't help.

What could be the issue?

Something may have the wrong screen size, or aspect ratio. What size does 'xrandr' say your screen is? It it actually the screen size?

What if you don't maximize Chrome, but rather resize the window to take up almost all of the screen? Is it possible to click on that area?

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 5778416)

Something may have the wrong screen size, or aspect ratio. What size does 'xrandr' say your screen is? It it actually the screen size?

Output:

Code:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192

eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm

  1920x1080    60.02*+  47.99  

  1400x1050    59.98  

  1280x1024    60.02  

  1280x960      60.00  

  1024x768      60.04    60.00  

  960x720      60.00  

  928x696      60.05  

  896x672      60.01  

  800x600      60.00    60.32    56.25  

  700x525      59.98  

  640x512      60.02  

  640x480      60.00    59.94  

  512x384      60.00  

  400x300      60.32    56.34  

  320x240      60.05  

DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

HDMI-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

It should be running at 1920x1080.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IsaacKuo (Post 5778433)

What if you don't maximize Chrome, but rather resize the window to take up almost all of the screen? Is it possible to click on that area?

Good question. Just tried and no. I need to unmaximize Chrome and then make sure the window doesn't expand into the "dead area".

Okay, that makes me suspect there is an invisible panel or something soaking up clicks in that area. Like, a panel set to 0% opacity, or a panel which is invisible due to incorrect video driver (or bug).

Unfortunately, Cinnamon does not offer any non-compositing option. Cinnamon purposefully does NOT offer any way to turn off 3d hardware graphics accelerated effects.

A quick and dirty fix is to install XFCE4 and use that instead of Cinnamon. Depending on the linux distribution you're using, XFCE4 probably has compositing turned on by default, but you can turn it off to see if that helps.

Alternatively, you could describe what distribution and version of linux you're using, as well as what graphics hardware you have (the output of lspci would be informative).

Quote:

Originally Posted by IsaacKuo (Post 5778626)

Unfortunately, Cinnamon does not offer any non-compositing option. Cinnamon purposefully does NOT offer any way to turn off 3d hardware graphics accelerated effects.

It does. I don't know the specific command parameters, but in Linux Mint you can choose a "Cinnamon 2D" session in the login screen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IsaacKuo (Post 5778626)

I'm on Fedora 26.

Code:

lspci -nnk | grep "VGA\|'Kern'\|3D\|Display" -A2

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 530 [8086:191b] (rev 06)

        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:115a]

        Kernel driver in use: i915

--

01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 960M] [10de:139b] (rev a2)

        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:115a]

        Kernel driver in use: nvidia

It is running Cinnamon via optirun.

That combo of two graphics chips makes me guess this is a laptop with hybrid graphics - we've had a LOT of questions here on LinuxQuestions from folks having difficulties getting that combo working properly...a lot of "invisible" things like menu popups or panels.

One fix might be to go into the BIOS and deactivate hybrid graphics by setting it to use only the intel graphics chip. Not great for gaming, but perfectly fine for normal use (and conserves power).

Generally, look up "hybrid graphics linux" for tips and tricks on how to get it to work properly.

As for Fedora 26...a cursory google search for "Fedora 26 Cinnamon" tells me that by default there is a panel along the bottom of the screen. Do you see this panel? If not, then your problem is that it's invisible and absorbing clicks. If you click near the left bottom corner, it might even be bringing up a large invisible popup "start menu".

I'm giving KDE a go at the moment and that doesn't appear to have the same problem.

I'm wondering if it was due to running Cinnamon via optirun:

Code:

exec optirun cinnamon-session --session cinnamon "$@"

I'll try it without at some point to confirm.