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Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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Zaxon_
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Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#1 Post by Zaxon_ »

Strange things happen since I upgraded to Debian 11 and Mate 1.24. If I open few terminals (or other GUI applications), then start closing them, the focus is not given to previously opened window. In the previous Mate version, if I closed some window, then the focus was back to previously opened window.
Where can I change this? I was looking in all the Mate settings and I could not find a place. :|

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#2 Post by joga »

I have the exact same problem. Very annoying. For instance, going thru a directory (Caja) with music. Clicking on a mp3, the player launches. Exit the player and the directory is now in the front. But not focused. I first thought it was my keyboard, but no. The window is on top, but not in focus. So going thru a directory with the arrow keys, press enter to launch, close with Alt-F4 and then try the arrow keys again and it's "stuck", because of no focus. This is very, very, very annoying and must be a bug. I can't recall having seen this in any windowing system before.

Edit: Another effect of the same problem: Have lots of windows open. Hit Alt-F4 to close the window on top, and another random window closes instead. I can't believe that your post is the only thing I find when searching internet for this problem.

Edit2: I've done some test and discovered that some buttons work (in Caja) after a application/window has closed in front of it. F5, backspace, etc, works, but no arrow keys or letters. Another problem I've seen is in System->Preferences->Window Preferences. "Help" doesn't correspond whats in the settings window and no explanation of what stuff is. I've tired to check and uncheck "Enable compositing window manager" and I can't see any difference (and I have no idea of what it means, as the help-button shows something else. I also found a confusing option in MATE Tweak->Windows: "Macro (Adaptive compositor)" and "Macro (No compositor)". No idea what that is, I thought MATE was my Window manager. Can't see any difference in behavior there either.

I guess this doesn't affect everyone as I imaging that internet would be screaming if this was a common problem in Mate. However, if I can't find any solution soon, I have to consider switching desktop altogether. Can't work with this kind of focus bug.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#3 Post by joga »

I don't like to bump threads, but I don't feel like I have any options. How can this be unanswered for so long? Does it not affect everybody who is running MATE 1.24 (1.24.1 in my case)? I've reinstalled Debian 11, but no solution. This is a complete showstopper that seriously hampers my workflow and it's doing dangerous things like closing random window instead of the one on top (that is in some sort of "half focus" (some buttons work, others do not), windows that may contain a search result that took 20 min to gather, or just closing something that I don't know what it was.

Again, this is kind of a serious bug that I can't image go undetected for anyone. Most it impacts caja, since caja is an environment where you launch things and just close them afterwards, expecting caja to return to focus.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#4 Post by sunrat »

This is a user forum so issues are only replied if some other user experiences it or otherwise knows about it. Maybe it is a rare issue. Maybe nobody else here uses MATE; I don't.
Could be a good idea to check the Mint forums to see if it is mentioned there. They make MATE so would have more users of it.
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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#5 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

Time to check if there is a bug report and if there is, contribute by explaining how you are affected (the more users who report the issue affecting them, the more likely the developers are going to rate the seriousness of the issue). If there isn't, file a bug report and let the developers know there is an issue. As sunrat said, this is a user forum - there is no reason to expect developers to be watching, especially if Mate users are not that common.

At a glance, it looks like there is a bug report.

https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues/647

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#6 Post by joga »

Thanks, both sunrat and FreewheelinFrank for your answers! Yes, I found something like this bug report, but it's never easy to know which keyword people uses and as I don't know if the problem is linux, Debian, Mate or something else I did not found something useful really. Haven't found any solution yet, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one in the known universe with the problem/who thinks there is a problem, which is the normal state of affairs. Would love to hear if TP found any solution. My may be to migrate to gnome flashback or something, because this is unbearable.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#7 Post by sunrat »

joga wrote: 2021-10-02 15:39 Would love to hear if TP found any solution.
Toilet paper is the solution to certain problems but I doubt it will help in this case. :mrgreen:

My may be to migrate to gnome flashback or something, because this is unbearable.
I use and recommend KDE Plasma, but Xfce or LXQt would also be better solutions than Gnome3 IMO.
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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#8 Post by joga »

Ah, maybe OP for "Original Post(er)" is the term, not TP (Top Poster). Not my native language, I hope I being understood! ;)

I didn't mentioned it before, because I didn't think it was relevant, but I did install KDE Plasma in frustration and used it for a few days. It was a beautiful and completely terrible experience. I stopped using KDE about 18 years ago and I now remember why (and Plasma committed suicide when I tried to disable the stupid kwallet/keyring nuisance "feature". It disappeared from lightdm and I can only login to MATE again [which works, but KDE for some reason trashed the panels]. I take it as a "sign" :P ). This is not the thread for it, but I rather not switch desktop. I'm fairly impressed by "Trinity" (running on my laptops) that I understand has some connection to Plasma, maybe I will try it on my main computer. The Raison d'être for MATE was to continue with Gnome2 and to *not* do anything radical, so I really don't understand why they decides to break such a fundamental thing as focus. I'm not really concerned with the technical and if gnome flashback behaves like MATE/Gnome2 then all is good. But haven't tried it yet.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#9 Post by joga »

Ok, my solution was to reinstall Debian 10. After installing Debian 11 on three desktops and four laptops I noticed that Debian started to "rot" from day one. Installing Lazarus on one machine got a broken install from fresh. Another had font and color problems. And another had strange pink colored boxes in the title bar of some applications, most notably firefox. On another machine, wrong resolution and randoms hangs on yet another machine. I recognize this from an earlier time, maybe Wheezy or Jessie. Nothing to do other than sit this version out. Back in Buster, and it works fine now in MATE! :)

Edit: Another problem was that Caja on some machines randomly decided to not remember individual sort order in some dirs. Just sometimes. Just because.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#10 Post by sgage »

I use MATE on Debian 11 updated from 10, and I do not experience this issue.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#11 Post by joga »

Hmm, maybe an update works better than a clean install? Don't think I want to risk it. Debian 10 is pretty new and modern anyway. What version of MATE do you run? 1.24.x? My latest netinstall of Debian 10.10 got me MATE 1.20.4.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#12 Post by craigevil »

Absolutely no issues on MATE.

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.10.63-v8+ aarch64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: MATE 1.24.1 info: mate-panel, plank wm: marco 1.24.1 
           vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: Raspberry Pi OS base: Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid 
Machine:   Type: ARM Device System: Raspberry Pi 400 Rev 1.0 details: BCM2835 rev: c03130 serial: <filter> 
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: N/A variant: cortex-a72 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: ARMv8 rev: 3 bogomips: 432 
           Speed: 2000 MHz min/max: 600/2000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2000 2: 2000 3: 2000 4: 2000 
           Features: asimd cpuid crc32 evtstrm fp 
Graphics:  Device-1: bcm2711-vc5 driver: vc4_drm v: N/A bus-ID: N/A chip-ID: brcm:gpu class-ID: gpu 
           Device-2: bcm2711-hdmi0 driver: N/A bus-ID: N/A chip-ID: brcm:soc class-ID: hdmi 
           Device-3: bcm2711-hdmi1 driver: N/A bus-ID: N/A chip-ID: brcm:soc class-ID: hdmi 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: marco v: 1.24.1 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev 
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz s-dpi: 96 
           OpenGL: renderer: V3D 4.2 v: 2.1 Mesa 21.2.3 direct render: Yes
Raspberry PI 400 Distro: Raspberry Pi OS Base: Debian Sid Kernel: 5.15.69-v8+ aarch64 DE: MATE Ram 4GB
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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#13 Post by sunrat »

For cases where something works fine for other users but not for you it could be something different in your configuration. Easiest way to determine this is to to create a new user and determine whether the new account has the same problem when logged in to it.
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Those who have lost data
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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#14 Post by joga »

craigevil: But as I understand, its already established that this is supposed to be a brain-dead "feature" and not a bug, if you follow FreewheelinFrank link (bug report) and then searching around with keywords you find there. Some discussion about "mouse following focus" and other stuff. How do you confirm that you don't have any issues? I could be a different workflow and not a difference in MATE behavior. What happens if you open a small application from maximized caja, hit alt-F4 and then arrow up or down? Do caja get the focus? Or, hit alt-F4 repeatedly and see if windows closes in the right (last accessed I think) order in the focus stack? I can image that if people use different workflows, this strange behavior may go totally unnoticed.

I also noticed that you don't seem run Debian at all, but a debian derived pi OS? Am I correct? I also have a Pi 400 (with raspbian and LXDE), but I don't want to upgrade anything on it since it works fine for it's purpose. Quite a nice little machine! :) All my other machines is using AMD64 except HP mini which is x86 (older Atom with no support for x86-64).

I always install the same way, on all my machines. Using Debians netinstall->cli install->auto parition with encrypted LVM->MATE. This is how I always set up debian (if you understand my shorthand description of the install process), since maybe Lenny or thereabouts. This "feature" shows on all machines (three custom desktops, four laptops: Lenovo X100e, Dell M430, Dell something-with-a-i5 and a HP mini 100). But now it's to late to test to create another user on any of the machines, because I downgraded to Debian 10 on the desktops, and installed Q4OS (debian 10-derived) with TDE (as I mentioned before, I'm quite pleased with TDE and think it suits laptops), as the different install showed other strange behaviors besides the MATE "feature".

I have no new installs planned or foreseen right now, but maybe I can try Debian 11+MATE 1.24.1 again sometime later (on a virtual machine or something).

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#15 Post by Zaxon_ »

joga wrote: 2021-10-07 16:25 Hmm, maybe an update works better than a clean install?
My problem was after update from 10.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#16 Post by rmflagg »

I have a fresh install of Debian 11 and I am having the same issue. For instance, if I open a file in Caja, then close the application associated with the file, focus does not return to Caja.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#17 Post by joga »

Ok, good (in some ways) to know that I'm not alone in this regard. I'm still on Debian 10 on all my computers since I did not make any progress to fix this total showstopper of a "feature".

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#18 Post by Zaxon_ »

I found that the smoking gun is Marco https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues/647

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#19 Post by joga »

Yes, the same link that FreewheelinFrank found #4. There seems not to be any progress here, so I will stick with Debian 10. I really hope this doesn't back-propagates to 10. I will not be happy if this BS appears after at sudo apt upgrade... To say this is a "feature" and be so delusional to think it's so good that it's not even an option, is beyond me.

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Re: Upgrading to Debian 11: MATE 1.24 does not focus windows.

#20 Post by Zaxon_ »

@yoga: I think this bug pushed me towards tiling window managers and I do not regret the decision. :)

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