[SOLVED] Window with focus is not on top

[triplemaya]

Hi. New pc. Fresh install. Running LMDE2. Copied everything over to the new box.
The top window of many does not have focus, and there is no way to get away from it except by interacting with the mouse using the corner buttons.
The alt tab command brings up the dialog, but when I release it I still have the same window.
The panel on autohide comes up under the window.
Sometimes when I move to a different workspace and back again a different window is on top!??

[debiman]

Copied everything over to the new box.

something might have gone wrong there?
how did you install?
what did you copy over, and how?

[Pick2]

LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) ?
I know nothing ... nothing

[triplemaya]

Hi debiman

Standard install off the disk. Copied in home files off my usb stick without dot files. Only dot files were .config and those for ooo, thunderbird etc.

[debiman]

copied over from where? another LMDE install? something else?
something might well have gone wrong there.
is everything ok if you just reinstall and do NOT copy over anything?

that said, your question might be better suited for the Linux Mint forums.

[triplemaya]

Thanks. Copied over from the other identical lmde machine, both up to date.
There are rather a lot of programs and settings in my workspace so reinstall is not a trivial option.

[triplemaya]

Solved. Weird! This is the result of having no swap partition at all. Put in a swap partition, which is showing zero use, but the problem has gone away.
Hope this helps someone sometime!

[debiman]

This is the result of having no swap partition at all. Put in a swap partition, which is showing zero use, but the problem has gone away.

sorry but no.
those two things might have occured and disappeared at the same time, but one is in no way related to the other.

[triplemaya]

Heck of a coincidence! I am aware of the apparent absurdity. However, on the previous, identical box there was a persistent and deeply irritating problem with swap. Despite having 8gb ram, after a while in use, especially with several instance of Firefox running, the system would start to use very small amounts of swap, and the whole system would start to crawl. Eventually forcing a reboot. So the symptoms are different, but the timing of the onset of the symptoms is identical. So I am not convinced by your assertion, though i understand very well why you made it. If you have any further suggestions to investigate all this I would be intrigued to follow it up.

[debiman]

the system would start to use very small amounts of swap, and the whole system would start to crawl.

"swappiness" (search it) might affect resources and cause freezes, but not swap itself.
even so, there must be a different underlying problem. swap usage does not make systems freeze.
and your original post does not mention freezes anyhow.
window focus is not affected by swap, swappiness or performance issues.

maybe you interpreted or described the symptoms wrongly; maybe you really were experiencing freezes.

So I am not convinced by your assertion, though i understand very well why you made it. If you have any further suggestions to investigate all this I would be intrigued to follow it up.

try to reproduce the problem the other way round: try to prove that adding swap makes windowfocus go haywire.

[triplemaya]

Hi. Thanks for your time. I understand a fair bit about swap etc. I was a c unix dev in industry for about 5 years.

try to prove that adding swap makes windowfocus go haywire.

It is not that adding swap makes the system go haywire, I am saying it seemed as if not having it made the system go haywire.
The problem is unique to this system. On the old, identical system, with swap, the system would start to crawl, after a while, whenever a very small amount of swap was used. On the new system, the system goes haywire with a focus malfuction of some kind, at around the same time period elapsed. Adding swap to the new system seemed to cure the problem, though I have now had a few instances of the problem recurring.
Yes, could be pure coincidence, but I am so out of my depth here I am grasping at straws!

[triplemaya]

FINALLY GOT TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS
nothing to do with swap, as correctly stated by debiman
This bug is reported at:
https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues/251
quoting from this page:

Disabling compositing worked for me.

I am aware of two GUI methods to disable it in Mint 18:

Preferences -> Windows -> uncheck 'Enable software compositing window manager'
Preferences -> Desktop Settings -> Windows -> Window Manager -> pick 'Marco' (without + Compositing)

THIS WORKS

Problem finally solved

(So glad I did not reinstall O/S to try and cure it!)

[debiman]

well done & thanks for sharing the solution!