HowTo: Fix MythTV’s Frontend not going full-screen in Ubuntu Jaunty.

by HyRax April 28, 2009

The next version of Ubuntu is here – 9.04 aka “Jaunty Jackalope”. Along with a wealth of new features comes a wealth of new minor bugs to fix. Not enough to be show-stoppers, but enough to annoy the heck out of you, and here’s a doozy.

If, like most people, you have Compiz enabled and you start the MythTV Frontend, you will notice that rather than go full-screen, Myth will start as a window, essentially, even if your settings within Myth say to go full-screen.

In a single-screen scenario, the MythTV window will start just underneath the upper Gnome panel and the lower Gnome panel will sit over the top of the Myth window, obscuring part of the display. Proof that it’s a window can be found by holding down the ALT key and then dragging the MythTV display around with your mouse.

If you’re like me and use two displays with Myth being run on the second screen, you will see a gap at the top of the screen that is the same height as the upper Gnome panel and you will see your wallpaper showing through there, as shown in the illustration below.

Here’s how to fix this problem.

EDIT June 2010: This problem still plagues Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04, and this fix will work for those releases as well.

The simplest fix is to disable Compiz altogether and MythTV will suddenly go full-screen, but that’s not really a solution – you want to keep your eye-candy! So follow the next few steps instead:

Go to System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager. If you do not have this option in your Preferences, then you need to add it. Quickly jump into a terminal and type in at the $ prompt:$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager…and hit Enter. Once installed, go back into the Preferences menu and bring it up.
Scroll down until you get to the “Utility” section and then click on “Workarounds”. It should alredy be selected as enabled, but if not, also make sure the checkbox next to it is enabled too.

The window changes to show you the Workaround options. The very first option is “Legacy Fullscreen Support”. This is unchecked by default. Click on the checkbox so that it IS checked, and then click on the Back button, then close the window.

Quit the MythTV Frontend if you had it open already and then restart it. You will now find that the gap has disappeared, and that the MythTV display is now appearing full-screen properly instead of just being a window.
Pat yourself on the back.

Happy viewing! Smilie: :)

Please note: This workaround is just that – a workaround. One minor problem that arises with it is that you may get occasional screen “flashing” or a flash of the background wallpaper appearing when a DBus message is displayed, or if you scroll a window or terminal on the same or other screen in a multi-screen setup. This does not occur often, however, and so may not bother you at all! The bug has been reported, and no doubt will be fixed in due course. When it is fixed, this workaround should be reversed.