Empty Windows in Swing Applications on Ubuntu 7.10
Java 6 on gutsy has problems with compiz
Using Java applications on Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy) sometimes show empty windows. I've encountered this mainly with LDAP Browser/Editor and IDEA 7.0. It does not occur too often and mainly with small dialog windows. I guess Java 6 has some problems with Compiz which is enabled by default since gutsy.
The solution is to upgrade to Java 7 which is currently available as an early access version from the JDK 7 project at Sun.
This fixed my problems with LDAP Browser/Editor but IDEA complained with a "Java Version Mismatch" error. IDEA 7.0 officially requires Java 5 or Java 6, but also works with the EA of JDK 7. You can disable the check for the correct Java version by adding the following line to idea.vmoptions:
-Didea.no.jdk.check=true
Update
As eivindw wrote in the comments you may also be able to make IDEA work with Java 6 by setting the following environment variable:
export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"
MToolkit switches to the Motif implementation of AWT which was removed for Java 7. On my 64-bit version of Gutsy using MToolkit with Java 6 resulted in a core dump.
Update