I have a problem similar to what's been mentioned in a few other questions, namely:

• Ati incompatible with Gnome-shell?
• Gnome Shell Glitched Top Bar Ubuntu 11.10

I have read a number of other posts here and on other forums and have tried a bunch of different solutions.

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The Problem

The problem manifests itself only in Gnome3. I have tried KDE, Unity and KFCE and all are fine. The graphics corruption is visible only on gnome panels (see images below).

Everything works fine with the free ATI drivers, but they just lack power. The problem occurs with the proprietary ones from AMD/ATI. I have installed version 11.11 and 12.1 as per the instructions on wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Oneiric_Installation_Guide. I have the same exact problem in both cases. I have tried this on clean installs of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot (x64 and x86) and on Linux Mint 12 (x64) with the same results.

Also, it looks like after some time of not using it, the PC just freezes. Maybe an overheat? Will look into it.

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Things I've Tried

I have tried the following fixes:

• Different versions of drivers from ATI including the latest - this worked for some, not for me.
• Installing Oneiric specific package generated from driver, as well as the default install
• Removed the Unity Global menu
• Disabled file manager handling desktop
• Disabled Compiz "detect refresh rate"
• Sync to VBlank in Compiz on and off

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Please help! This is the first time in 10 years that I've finally had the chance to switch my primary desktop to Linux (stopped doing .NET dev work), and this is really getting me down.

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This is what the problem looks like:

And: