Continuing my series of fun things to fix after an upgrade, I had an interesting issue after my Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot upgrade. Intermittently, when moving the mouse to the left of the screen or changing into expo, an opaque orange snap box would appear on the left side of the screen. The box would persist through changing into and out of expo, and often would only go when I log out and back in again.

A screenshot of the problem is below:

I believe the issue has been documented at LaunchPad under bug number 879648, but no resolution has yet been posted.

It occurred to me that the issue could be do to with Compiz compositing, and after playing around with the Window Management settings, the problem seems to be resolved for me. The solution was as follows:

• Run the CompizConfig Settings Manager. If it’s not installed, then drop into a terminal window and type:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

• Click on Window Management
• Uncheck the the Grid

If you use the grid functions, then view this as a workaround. I never used the grid, so it’s no hassle for me to disable it. At least I can now switch workspaces and move the mouse around without having to look at my desktop through opaque orange glasses.