Dragging a window to the edge of the screen does not tile/semi-maximize it (for some apps)

[Alexander Kallenbach]

Have a relatively fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.10. Unfortunately, I just had to realize that dragging windows to the left or right edge unfortunately does not have the desired effect in a number of cases that they fill half the screen. This applies to the following apps, among others:
- LibreOffice
- Nautilus
- Gnome Calendar
- Gnome Tasks
- Settings
Seems to be the same in a wayland and X Session. Especially the problem with LibreOffice makes working almost impossible for me.

Should not necessarily be part of a bug report, but I'm thinking about switching back to Unity or another desktop environment, as the Gnome desktop doesn't seem to be mature for a long time (I've already reported well over 10 bugs now).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.30.1-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-11.12-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Dec 3 18:09:43 2018
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-11-30 (3 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64 (20181017.3)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Could you please clarify what the "desired" effect is, and what the observed effect is?

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

I expected that the dragged windows get minimized to the left or right half of the screen, depending on which screen edge I'm dragging them. It is working with some apps, like Firefox.
I expected to that every app works this way like it did under e.g. Unity.

I would have expected above all that the core apps would work.

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

I wanted to say maximized not minimized.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks.

I can't reproduce the bug myself. Are you using multiple monitors?

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

Hi,

no I'm using just my build-in monitor of my Thinkpad X1 Yoga.

Tried it again with activated experimental fractional scaling and now it is working. I don't know if there is an interrelation.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

usually if the half-screen fails it's because the minimal width of the window you try to edge is higher than half of the horizontal screen space. What resolution are you using? Some of those applications can't be shrinked too much, e.G calendar and nautilus are know issue, see bug #1806279 for example

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

My screen has a resolution set to 2550*1440, scaling has been set to 200%. It is now set to 150%.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Interesting. I think Windows 10 has the same kind of limitation. Some windows occupy more than half the screen when semi-maximized, so adding a second window after that only gets less than half. Maybe that would be a better design for gnome-shell than just plain refusing.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Alexander, you didn't really reply to the question though. Do you confirm they had more than half the screen size as minimal width? Did reducing the % workarounded the issue?

@Daniel, right, that would be a gnome-shell feature request for upstream

[Alexander Kallenbach (kallenbachalex)]

Setting the scaling to 150% solved the issue for me. But I don't know if it is because of the minimum width.

If I understand it correctly, due to the scaling I have 1225 pixels available instead of 2550, half of which would be 637 pixels. Doesn't sound that bad either. There are also monitors and beamers that have a lower resolution than 1225 pixel in width, right?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Right, well those can be used, you just can't snap a window that has minimal size of 700 to half a screen in this case... it's easy to check, resize one of those application down as much as you can and see if it's smaller than half your screen?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-shell (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]