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For the last couple of months my display doesn't clear to the background when a window is closed or minimized. It shows the trail of the window. This was after a update. It also seems to work normally every fourth or fifth update. What is causing this?

enter image description here

sudo lshw | grep -A9 VGA:

description: VGA compatible controller
                product: RS880 [Radeon HD 4200]
                vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
                physical id: 5
                bus info: pci@0000:01:05.0
                version: 00
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
                configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
edwinksl
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rmk1220
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  • Please provide further information in order to help us help you! [edit] your post and include information regarding graphics hardware and drivers at minimum. you can obtain this information by running sudo lshw | grep -A9 VGA in a terminal – Elder Geek Sep 04 '16 at 20:22
  • Hi Elder Geek; I added the information to my post that you requested. – rmk1220 Sep 07 '16 at 01:20
  • Odd. It should be fully supported. See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver Is this a desktop or a laptop? – Elder Geek Sep 07 '16 at 04:10
  • It is a desktop – rmk1220 Sep 08 '16 at 00:36
  • Went to link and followed the directions still doing same thing. – rmk1220 Sep 08 '16 at 01:00
  • Try reseating the card. I noticed the card was released in 2010 and will be 6 years old come October. Do you suppose it could be failing? – Elder Geek Sep 08 '16 at 13:23
  • It is embedded on the mother board, I suppose it could be I'll switch to using a different desktop like kde and see if the problem continues or is just with unity. – rmk1220 Sep 09 '16 at 01:31
  • Here's a related thought. http://askubuntu.com/questions/757296/can-i-replace-my-desktop-environment – Elder Geek Sep 09 '16 at 22:32
  • You could also just try changing display managers as mentioned here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/152256/how-do-i-switch-from-lightdm-to-gdm – Elder Geek Sep 09 '16 at 22:46
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    It has to be something with Unity as I switched to Gnome desktop and have not had any problems. I'll try the changing the display manager in unity and see what happens. – rmk1220 Sep 10 '16 at 00:24
  • That may have something to do with gnome being a 2D desktop and Unity requiring 3D compositing. Unfortunately I have thus far been unable to find a source to confirm this theory. – Elder Geek Sep 10 '16 at 17:52
  • I changed the display manager to gdm and haven't had a problem since. Hopfully this has solved the problem. Thanks for you help. – rmk1220 Sep 12 '16 at 20:11
  • Bravo! Please feel free to write up your own answer and the steps you used to implement it so that others with your issue can benefit from your experience! Ping me when you are done and I'll upvote it. – Elder Geek Sep 12 '16 at 20:27

1 Answers1

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You could try a less demanding Desktop Environment such as Gnome, LXDE, XFCE, or even OpenBox These have been known to work quite well on older systems.

Sources: Can i replace my desktop environment?

http://www.howtogeek.com/107368/how-to-install-the-lightweight-lxde-desktop-on-ubuntu/

https://www.liquidweb.com/kb/how-to-install-the-xfce-desktop-environment-on-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

http://linux.about.com/od/howtos/tp/How-To-Install-And-Configure-Openbox-Using-Ubuntu.htm

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