(k)Ubuntu with compiz has lines on screen after rebooting from hibernation or suspending

Interestingly enough, I ran into another problem while using Ubuntu yesterday. I was using my laptop for a while, without the power cord, and I got a message from Ubuntu saying that my battery was about to die out. So, I promptly decided to hibernate my computer for the night and then plug it back into the power cord once I found it in the morning.

Finally, I woke up today morning, found the power cord, plugged it in and started Ubuntu. Sure enough, everything worked great. Ubuntu read the 'waking up the computer' message while it was booting and once if finished booting, it asked me for my password (although I have automatic login turned on, I guess it doesn't apply to login after wake up from hibernation or suspension) and after typing it in ... Ubuntu opened my desktop, just as I had left it the night earlier.

However, the first thing I noticed after booting in was the lines or I suppose you can call them artifacts that appeared around the screen where the "compiz reflections" were supposed to be. So even when I opened a tool tip, all I'd get were lines. As shown below:

click picture to enlarge it and see the lines around the windows, desktop and tooltip.

I'm guessing that this is a video card problem or a compiz coding problem. It might also happen after you wake up your computer after suspending it. Although I realise that suspend might not be the same as hibernate, and even after repeatedly trying to reproduce the problem, it might occur after suspension. Nevertheless, I'm going to include the possibility and mention it in this post, in case someone else out there is experiencing the same problem.

Anyway, fixing the problem is simple. Restart compiz. Once you restart compiz, your screen will flutter for a second and then fix the lines that occur without changing anything else on your computer.

How to restart Compiz

Update/Tip: Turns out you can also do this by pressing Alt + F2 and typing in compiz. Then just click run and compiz should restart...

1. Press Alt + F2
2. Type in: gnome-terminal
3. Type in compiz in terminal
4. Wait for a second and let compiz restart
5. Quit terminal

Once you restart compiz, you can then go back to playing with the wobbly windows without the weird lines.