Re: windows completely disappear when "minimize" button clicked


--- On Tue, 11/25/08, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Paul Johnson <pauljohn32@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: windows completely disappear when "minimize" button clicked
To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 12:21 PM
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Leonard Chatagnier
<lenc5570@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



They are wasting your time telling you to remove
the compiz
package.
Compiz is the window manager that gives desktop
effects,
but I doubt
you are running it if you have never heard of it.
Further,
It has
NOTHING to do with the problem you see. The
windows are
there, you
just need to find them. Use Alt-TAB. If you
start the
window list
applet in the gnome panel, you can find the
minimized ones.
PJ

Yes, Paul, what you say is true in general. But,
wasn't the OP asking why his windows disappeared and why
there were no entries in the panel. Believe it or not compiz
caused me similar problems. Windows shouldn't disappear
from the panel unless you closed it out or some other
program is fiddling with it. I don't use Intrepid yet
but would like to also know why the window disappeared and
did not show on the panel. Can you explain?
Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


I think I said in the first post, you need to check if the
program had
actually died or been sent a kill signal or if it is just
floating in
window manager land. For that, there are many techniques,
but i run

ps aux

to list everything that's running and I grep for
specifics, like

ps aux | grep firefox

If you don't want to bother with that, you might just
hit Alt-TAB a
bunch of times to cycle through all open windows.

Now, if a program is running and you see it in ps output,
it is not
"disappeared", it is just lost to the gnome
panel. Sometimes my
students say "the program disappeared" and
I've never found one that
was actually gone. As I also said in the first post to
answer this
OP, the panel's program listing applet may die and so
it will appear
to you as though programs are 'gone', but they are
not. Or the
program listing applet may only show programs on the
current
workspace, but the window was somehow inadvertently moved
to a
different workspace.

<old_timer_rant>
Sometimes I think Gnome is a bad thing for Linux users.
Unless people
go through the old-fashioned experience of starting X11
without a
pimpy/automagical desktop, they seem to not understand some
pretty
important, basic things. There is a program called the
"window
manager" that controls window placement and, if it
supports
minimization or "window shading", then it will
have procedures to
retrieve windows from that state. The Gnome experience has
made
people so dependent on the all-powerful panel as a
replacement for
basic window management skills that I shutter to go into
the computer
lab and see the weird things students do. If you
administer your own
system, you might see about installing a true window
manager like
Window Maker and studying up on that. You can run
"gnome-panel"
inside there if you want to. If you go really old school,
uninstall
the graphical log in altogether and run startx to bring up
the X
server. You don't learn anything until you break
something.

But, then again, you gotta take my advice with caution. I
also think
that cars that actually start on the first time are bad
because nobody
can change a starter motor or spark plugs anymore.
</old_timer_rant>

pj

Paul, thanks for the extra info and rant. Not sure you answered my question,...why his windows disappeared and why
there were no entries in the panel.
The OP didn't report back what he did or maybe I missed it.
But no matter; it's not necessary. I'm one of those guys that has changed out several starters and many points and condensers in my early days but don't care to again ever(bad back and age)-:)
Take care and have a great day,
Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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