New windows stack up in top left corner

[Heikki Toivonen]

Binary package hint: metacity

This is happening in Gutsy Gibbon. Not sure if metacity is the right package, could be Gnome or something else...

I've noticed that most of the windows open stacked up in top left corner (at least the programs I use the most). I think in Dapper windows cascaded. This concerns at least Firefox, Thunderbird and Calculator.

(XEmacs and Nautilus are two programs that seem to place window somewhat randomly. gnome-terminal seems to tile windows.)

I have written more about my system here: http://chandlerproject.org/Journal/UbuntuGutsyGibbonOnLatitudeD820

[LKRaider (paul-eipper)]

For me Nautilus is opening windows on the top left corner everytime aswell. It's really annoying.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that has nothing to do with gdm which is the login manager

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you the desktop effects option?

[Heikki Toivonen (hjtoi)]

I tried the desktop effects but turned them off.

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

this appeared for me after feisty->gutsy upgrade. no desktop effects. most (presumably those that aren't specified a position by the app) windows that don't fit into empty space, appear at top left instead of in a cascade as before. also happens with a newly created test user.

[LKRaider (paul-eipper)]

Yes, I'm on a Feisty->Gutsy upgrade system aswell.

Any hints on where this bug is happening (which setting)? It's as if the default "smart" metacity window placement (tile without overlap behaviour) has gone "stupid" (throw all on top-left corner) :S

It is REALLY annoying. Opening multiple terminals (for example) makes them all appear on top of each other (top-left corner), forcing me to move each new window to another place so I can see the previous one ...

[Hristo Hristov (xpertbg)]

I applied a patch based on http://chad.glendenin.com/metacity/2.12/metacity-2.12-placement.patch to Debian's metacity package v.2.20.2-1 . I think it works fine for now, even though I didn't review the code if it works correctly, just made it compile. The patch is attached.

[LKRaider (paul-eipper)]

Yes, I too went looking for a patch and found that same one, and am using it right now on my system (using the random placement mode :)

I contacted the author about updating the patch and implementing a better cascaded window placement, like he mentioned in the website, and he responded he would look into it. Hopefully we'll get a new patch from him, and the maintainers here take into consideration merging it into the distribution.

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

And suddenly, there was movement upstream! Erwann Chenede has found the bug and sent in a patch of approximately four lines which fixes the whole thing.

[LKRaider (paul-eipper)]

Awesome! Hopefully it will be released soon on a Hardy Heron repo near us :)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug has been fixed upstream now

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package metacity - 1:2.23.21-0ubuntu1

---------------
metacity (1:2.23.21-0ubuntu1) intrepid; urgency=low

  * New upstream development release
    - Re-enable cascading (Erwann) (LP: #157497)
    - Window decoration updates colour when GTK theme changes (LP: #192684)
  * Sync on Debian
  * debian/libmetacity0.preinst, debian/libmetacity-dev.preinst,
    debian/metacity.preinst: On upgrades from Gutsy, remove the symlinks to
    entire /usr/share/doc/<package>/ directories which got in troduced in Gutsy.
    They break upgrades all over, and current cdbs just
    symlinks individual files.
  * debian/metacity-common.gconf-defaults: 2 workspaces.
  * debian/patches/001_strict_focus.patch: strict focus.
  * debian/patches/006_raise_on_click_for_click_mode.patch: use raise on
    click option.
  * debian/patches/003_workspaces_default_name.patch: use "Desk" instead of
    "Workspace" for default workspaces naming.
  * debian/patches/011_gnome_482354_attachment_104591.patch: (Gnome: #482354)
    fix firefox-3.0 bug (LP: #175904) - "Firefox-3.0 window moves to
    current workspace" by applying patch for metacity bug
    "gtk_window_present() causes full applications to move workspaces"
  * debian/patches/012_default_keybinding.patch:
    Fix default keybinding for shift-alt-tab

 -- Pedro Fragoso <email address hidden> Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:36:06 +0100

[Paul Whittaker (launchpad-pdw)]

I'm running metacity 1:2.34.1-1ubuntu11 (as part of Unity 2D) on Ubuntu Precise amd64, and (despite post #12) I still see this issue.

I have a keybinding to launch an xterm, and if I press it four times then I get four xterms opened in the top left of the screen, almost entirely overlapping each other. I have to manually drag the windows to be able to see their content. This is on an empty 1920x1200 desktop, so there is plenty of free space.

Each window is very slightly offset from the previous one (1px to the right, and 28px down) so that only their title bars are non-overlapping.

Could somebody advise as to whether I need to raise this as a new bug, given that this ticket thinks it's been fixed?