New window placement always set to (0,0)?

[suplero]

A little bit of an annoyance - and could be my setup vs the software.

Background: have an old video card - nvidia 710, was running kubuntu 2010 using 3 monitors - 2 1080p and one 1600x1200. Everything worked fine - the settings for bringing up a new window under the mouse worked perfectly, with windows falling onto the current screen with tiling that didn't overlap everything.

Got a new 4k monitor but the video card slows down to 30hz refresh on it. dropping the resolution down to 1920x1080 lets me run at 60hz.

After installing the monitor, there was obviously some setting changes somewhere, and every new window would show up at (0,0) - the left most monitor, starting in the upper left corner. Traveling across a screen or two to set the new window position is clunky - especially if every click starts a new window at that position.

Installing kubuntu 2110 didn't solve this issue - new windows still appear at (0,0) when started from inside another application.

For example: in firefox, a link can be right-clicked "open in new window" and it appears in the current screen. However, when clicking that link (and it creates a new window) the window will automatically be set to (0,0).

The mouse/window settings I use under "window management" are:
focus follows mouse (mouse precedence)
Focus stealing prevention: medium
and under 'advanced': Window placement: Under mouse (with Allow apps to remember positions checked)

Another bug that might point to a monitor/video issue is that snapping doesn't occur quite right for the 4k monitor in 1080p resolution - the snapping has some invisible grid that it follows, not next to windows or the top or bottom of the screen.

I'm slowly updating my system - a newer computer is on the horizon, but probably keeping with integrated graphics.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

thanks

[suplero]

Doing a little bit of troubleshooting:

The other window setting that is checked: Active screen follows mouse - unchecked it, applied, then rechecked and applied to make sure that setting was configured - still brought up new windows at (0,0)

Resetting the monitor to 4k resolution helped with snapping, then going back to 1080p, the snapping returned to some other grid system. But the windows still popped up at (0,0) rather than on the current screen and under the mouse.


Another little behavior that was weird until a reboot was changing the cursor icons. When initially changed the new cursor would appear properly in every window, but would revert back to the breeze cursor set when hovered over the background. But this went away after a reboot.

Rebooting 3 times didn't change the new windows from appearing at (0,0) though.

I will cycle the settings again and reboot to see if there is any effect.

[suplero]

Rebooted - still puts new window at (0,0)

Snapping was fixed by reducing the parent window size to less than 3/4 of the full height of the screen - maybe the snapping grid couldn't fully work with a screen that got a little too tall for the calculations?

changed to 'Advanced' -> Window placement: Centered

which should (theoretically?) make every window appear in the center of a screen, rebooted, still pops up at (0,0)

kind of annoying when making plots in octave that every figure shows up at (0,0) no matter which monitor I start in.

The 4k monitor (still set at 1080p) is the center screen, and set as the primary, yet the left monitor - the other 1080p - gets every new window from either of the other 2 monitors.

I'm hoping this goes away with a new computer, since it only appeared after getting the 4k monitor set up.

[jlittle]

Are you using Wayland, or X windows? Wayland is the default on new installs, IIRC.

[suplero]

I started in x11, and now went to wayland. wayland works with starting windows in the current screen, although it seems to have disabled night color.

I will play around with wayland more.

thanks for the help

[suplero]

Just curious - is there a file for each program that tells where to place a new window?

I played around with the display arrangement and set the middle monitor as the "left" monitor, and windows popped up in a cascaded fashion, and when returning to the original layout, a new octave window isn't at (0,0) but instead seems to remember where the cascaded position was.

This also applied to vnc viewer - the first time it started it was in the middle monitor, and when changing the display arrangement, vnc windows always seemed to follow the "middle" monitor - which leads me to suspect there is a file somewhere that is keeping track of locations for these windows.

if i can just edit the file to get things to pop in nicely, that would be a good fit.

Also, to edit the wayland vs x11 situation - after several reboots, x11 still likes to start new windows at (0,0), but wayland doesn't. However, wayland doesn't set night color mode after a couple more reboots.

[jlittle]

I think the behaviour you report is weird, and that there's some settings you could reset to get back to defaults. I suggest checking with a new user, to see if the problem occurs for that user. If it doesn't, you could try the tedious renaming files to .bak, test by logging out and back in, then rename them back. .config would be a good one to start with.

Just curious - is there a file for each program that tells where to place a new window?

Not quite. KDE has "window rules" in system settings, and you can set up rules to place windows according to several criteria, but ... they just don't work for placing windows, at least not for me.

With X windows some apps, including K ones, can be told where to go on the command line. I use this method to place dolphin and konsole windows across a couple of screens for my work. For example, I have a panel widget that has the "Command" set to

dolphin -geometry 700x500+2000+340 ~/z/dcss

to start dolphin in z/dcss in my home directory. The numbers are all pixels, and they mean 700 wide by 500 tall, at 2000 from the left, 340 from the top. The monitor on the left is 1920x1080, so 2000 from the left puts it 80 pixels from the left of the second monitor.

[chimak111]

Are you using Wayland, or X windows? Wayland is the default on new installs, IIRC.

It's still X11 according to

Plasma Wayland session

• A Plasma Wayland session is installed, but is not the default. A Wayland session can be started by selecting it at the login screen.

Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ImpishIndri/Beta/Kubuntu (I couldn't find the final release notes.)

[claydoh]

Many to most applications can save their last window position in its specific config file. At least KDE ones do. Not sure where/how Kwin keeps track of things


Now:

Got a new 4k monitor but the video card slows down to 30hz refresh on it. dropping the resolution down to 1920x1080 lets me run at 60hz.

I wonder if this is related - the screen is resized at login from its native resolution, and this might be a suspect here, or at least a Person of Interest.

It may be worth switching/swapping cables, making sure that the one you use (and any adapters, if used) on the 4K monitor is actually capable of 4K/60.
Another issues is that Xorg will only use the lowest refresh rate of all the monitors, though this probably won't be a factor in this problem.

[suplero]

Thanks for the reply.

Looking at the settings for the monitors, the non-4k monitors are at 60hz (at least that is what the setting is displaying) and in 4k mode, the refresh is 30hz for just the one monitor. in 1080p mode, all refresh rates can be set at 60hz.

my little video card actually surprised me by working on all 3 monitors when in 4k mode. I'm sure the video card is the limiting factor here. if the new hardware has issues then more investigation will be needed.

my plan is to do a new install with the upgraded video to see how things work out.