Wine window disappears when switching windows

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: compiz

Hello! I know this bug is a bit unusual, but it might be easy to fix and very cool if it worked.

I'm trying to run Fallout3 on wine. I got everything working decently, and I was surprised to see Compiz almost works with it: I can start the game in full-screen, then I can twist the desktop cube, cover-flip applications, activate expo, transparency, and it actually works, with the Fallout3 window updating and everything.

When I switch windows I can see an entry for a "Fallout3" window in the the task-bar (complete with a little pip-boy icon). However, if I keep doing whatever I'm doing (flipping between windows or desktops, and generally doing things outside the fallout window), at some point* the Fallout window disappears, both from the screen and from the window list (task-bar, alt-tab menu, cover-flip). I can hear the game sounds continuing, so it doesn't completely crash, it just goes hidden somewhere.

I know "Fallout3" is not even in the same dictionary with "supported", but since the game actually works I'm sure it's either a bug in Compiz or in Wine, and I'm hoping someone is willing to look into it, and at least tell me what should I look at to find out what the problem is. Imagine how cool a YouTube video of Fallout working among Compiz effects in Ubuntu would be :)

By the way, I'm not using Wine from the Ubuntu repositories, I had to get sources from 1.1.8 and a couple of patches to get it working; so I'm attaching this only on Compiz, and I'll file it again separately for Wine.

(*: I've written this entire report with the Fallout window in the background, turned semi-transparent, and with the browser window above it, also transparent (and with blur enabled), and it keeps working, so it's very close to being perfect. The window only disappears when I play with window/desktop switching. Also, I'm using the nVidia binary drivers from the Ubuntu repository, with a GeForce 9600GT if anyone wants to know.)

[jkm (jkm-testware)]

I run wine 1.2 (and Ubuntu 10.04) and are experiencing this situation with a danish book-keeping application. When minimized I can see the application in the taskbar, but when I unminimized (maximize is greyed out) the application it seem to be very small and I can not get hold of it (or resize).
Therefor I can not operate the application anymore.

Anyone having a work-a-round for this?

[Derek_ (derek-name)]

Maybe you can try resizing that window using wmctrl.