compiz Application Switcher mouse/screen focus issues

[Ákos Maróy]

Binary package hint: compiz

as also reported by someone on the forum:

Under Natty, it seems there's a huge bug with the Compiz Application Switcher. Not the Ring Switcher, Shift Switcher, or Static Application Switcher, just the standard "Application Switcher." Whenever I enable it, if you switch between windows using "ALT+Tab," mouse and keyboard events in the switched-to window don't register on the screen. But, if you minimize and restore the window, or maximize restore it, the problem is fixed and you can see the mouse and keyboard events did actually occur.

Here's an example: if both firefox and gedit are running and I use "ALT-Tab" to switch over to gedit, I can type a sentence and nothing appears in gedit. I can click on the "File" menu and it won't display. But, if I minimize or restore the window and bring it back, everything I typed will be there.

Interestingly, it's not universal to everything on the screen. In my example, if I switch back to firefox, using "Ctrl+Tab" to switch between open tabs does nothing, except you can actually see the title bar of firefox change to match the tab it should be switching to. If you minimize firefox and bring it back, it will actually be on the tab you switched to.

Since the events seem to occur, but not appear on the screen, I'm not sure if this is a compiz bug, a natty bug, or display driver bug (I'm using the fglrx driver for my ati card). I have found the problem exists in both Unity and gnome session. Disabling the Application Switcher in CompizConfig Settings Manager eliminates the issue.

The behavior has persisted through about 3 clean installs of Natty (64-bit). Has anyone else seen this happen with the Application Switcher or found a setting to fix it? Thanks.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1750702

I'm experiencing the very same issue. this really makes unity unusable.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Navid Ht (navidht)]

I have this problem too, using ubuntu 11.10, xfce desktop, compiz.
problem appeared after i installed fglrx driver for my ati card, i read some other people who have this problem also have fglrx driver, so there is something related between this bug and fglrx driver.

here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11258898#post11258898 ~!geek!~ found a solution to not experience the problem again, but can't say fixed it:
open CompizConfig Settings Manger > Application Switcher > General tab > uncheck Mipmap

(sorry for bad english).

[MestreLion (mestrelion)]

Same here, ubuntu 12.04 desktop x64, also using fglrx drivers (are they really related to the bug?)

And the "uncheck Minimap" workaround worked perfectly, thanks Navid!

(it was also described here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1750702 . And as a side-note, I wonder why this stupid policy on closing threads over a year: it took more than an year to find the solution, so why shouldn't the guy post in the thread? Why create another one and leave that one unsolved? Makes no sense! Better to keep the same issue in the same thread... /rant)