Gnome 3 fullscreen doesn't work for some applications when a custom display mode (960x540) is active

[Radoslaw]

Using Gnome 3 or Ubuntu session (default in 18.04) when you try to run some game in fullscreen mode instead it opens at top left small window. This happens for example for Way to Go! Steam game and perhaps any SDL 1 game. It's easy to reproduce, install a game using SDL 1 library for example abe (apt install abe) and try to run it. There are two kinds of effect, the abe and perhaps other games from Ubuntu repository fails to run properly fullscreen only on first use after login. On second and further run they launch properly on fullscreen. The Steam game (Way to Go !) fails to run fullscreen each time. Sometimes you see only part of the game screen at top left window and you even can't operate it, sometimes whole screen is shown. When you manage to reach game settings switching fullscreen on and off few times makes the fullscreen run properly. The problem doesn't exist for example using Unity or Windowmaker sessions. It exists using any Gnome 3 Xorg sessions, even the classic one.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please:

1. Log into a Xorg session

2. Open a Terminal window

3. Reproduce the bug

4. Alt+Tab to the terminal and run:

  xwininfo -all > window_info.txt

5. When the crosshair mouse pointer appears use it to click on the affected game window.

6. Send us the resulting file 'window_info.txt'

[Radoslaw (radraw)]

Here you are the xwininfo test result.

[Radoslaw (radraw)]

Further investigation shows that the abe game fails fullscreen only when I have additional xrandr mode added. It's set within session startup script with commands:

output="HDMI-0"
xrandr --nograb --newmode "960x540" 40.75 960 992 1088 1216 540 543 548 562 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --nograb --addmode $output 960x540

When I disable the mode addition abe runs fine fullscreen. Way to Go fails always no matter the additional mode is inserted or not.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like equal blame on the application, window manager (mutter) and the user :)

* Application: Is 640x480 still so may be to blame for ignoring window resize requests.

* Window manager: May be ignoring the "Fullscreen" state on the window(?). But not sure, since it works with the above workaround.

* User: Added custom mode "960x540" which seems to be confusing the system.

[Radoslaw (radraw)]

"when a custom display mode (960x540) is active" has been added to description but (as I mentioned before) it's not true for the Steam Way To Go game.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.