Compiz and Window Raising

[zcacogp]

Hi,

I have an issue which has developed during the day today, I suspect as a result of an update I did a few hours ago.

I am using Mint 19 MATE, and use Compiz as the Window Manager. As of today, newly-opened windows have not opened as you'd expect; an example is opening a LibreOffice file from a Caja window. You'd expect this to open at the front of the desktop - above the Caja window that it was opened from, whereas it opens behind the Caja window meaning you need to manually raise the new window. This is not a vast issue but is quite annoying, and I know it worked fine this morning. I've tried resetting Compiz and the problem persists. Changing the manager to Marco makes the problem go away, but you lose the workflow capabilities offered by Compiz.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to do about it?

All help welcomed, thanks.


Oli.

[gm10]

In Compiz settings go to General Options > Focus & Raise Behaviour and make sure that Focus Prevention Level is Normal or lower. Also make sure that auto-raise above is checked.

[zcacogp]

Gm10,

Thanks for your help. Focus prevention level is 'Low' and I don't want windows to auto-raise so this is not checked.

I don't think the behaviour is explained by the Compiz settings; it was fine this morning (I was doing a task which involved opening and closing a lot of windows) but it's not fine now. I think it's due to an update I did during the day, but this is guesswork.

Again, thanks for your help. All other ideas welcomed.


Oli.

[gm10]

Sorry, that was the only idea from me. I know it behaves for me like you describe with Focus Prevention on high or very high, but otherwise I can't reproduce it. Maybe start disabling plugins until you find the one responsible.

I take it you already tried simply re-logging or even re-booting?

[zcacogp]

Gm10,

Thanks again. No, I'll confess that I hadn't tried a nice clean re-boot and now that I have done so it seems to be back to where it should be. I'm slightly curious as to what happened and whether it will remain as it should be as odd and inexplicable behaviour makes me nervous, but it's good for now.

So thanks for your second idea - it was a good one!


Oli.

[zcacogp]

Marking this thread as solved, thanks to Gm10.

[zcacogp]

... and it's back!

A quick re-boot solved the annoying behaviour and all was well for an hour or so. However it then started doing it again.

Another quick reboot solved the problem again and all is now as it should be, but I would be fairly confident that it will misbehave again very soon.

Has anyone any ideas about this? What information can I post to help diagnose it? Has anyone else experienced this behaviour? It's Mint 19 MATE, fresh install, all updated as it should be on a regular basis.

Thanks for any help offered.


Oli.

[gm10]

Did you try setting Focus Prevention to off by the way? It's really the only setting I can think of to influence this.

I'm usually using Marco+Compton but I have compiz fully configured, I'll switch to it and see if it stops working after a while, maybe I'll understand if I see the problem for myself.