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I've just installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 and am encountering a very annoying problem.

After using the pc for a while:

  • it becomes impossible to change focus to another window by mouse click
  • it is still possible to use Alt+Tab to change focus, but the window doesn't react to mouse clicks
  • it is not possible to click on desktop buttons (application/places/system) and also it's impossible to move/drag windows

The really weird thing is that I was previously experiencing the same problems in OpenSuse leap 42 with different desktops (KDE plasma, xfce, icewm). It was very annoying, and that's the main reason why I reinstalled Linux and tried Ubuntu Mate 16.

I'm starting to suspect that this is bug in recent versions of X.org which is present in any recent distribution. I don't think it's a hardware problem (in win7 I have no issue).

Did anyone see this problem? Any suggestion or solution?

David Foerster
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syraxes
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  • I also have this problem I think. However if I click on the title bar, then the window gets the focus. If I click anywhere else, the window is raised to the front but does not have the focus (key strokes are not registered by said window). Is this what you have? – Vineus Sep 21 '16 at 14:06
  • Is it maybe related to Wayland? Are you using Wayland or Xorg? It is possible that the error might not occur if you switch XServer. You can select it at the login page (https://itsfoss.com/switch-xorg-wayland/). – nobody Jan 02 '19 at 15:52

3 Answers3

5

I'm a bit late, but anyway, here's a temporary fix:
Press CTRL+ALT+F4

You should see a terminal - now go back to the graphical environment with CTRL+ALT+F1
(or F7, depends on your Ubuntu version)

Elder Geek
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A.N. O'Nyme
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0

I have had an identical problem with mouse focus locked to active window or a part of it. It happened on a fresh install of Xubuntu 18.04. I could not click on top window to set focus to it. Top window remained transparent for mouse pointer so I could highlight the text in window below and click on invisible links. The panel bar became inaccessible, so did the rest of the desktop. Sometimes right clicking would release the focus but it all seemed very random. Changing to TTY and back to GUI wans't helping as other answer suggests. Neither did disabling the touchpad in my laptop. After long research of similar bug reports, I came across this solution and so far so good, it was the fix I was looking for.

sudo apt install wmctrl
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/click_to_focus -s true 
wmctrl -R WindowName 
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/click_to_focus -s false

The bug report can be found here: source

ohwell
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I have had the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04 with a Dell Laptop and a Mad Catz Rat 7 mouse.

I fixed this issue using the --reassign option of xinput command. Beforehands I listed all using xinput --list. This way I got a list of all my input devices and I found the Rat 7 mouse in the tree below the "Virtual Core Pointer". In my case the Rat 7 mouse used ID 16 and the Virtual Core Pointer used ID 2. The resulting command to fix the issue for me was:

xinput --reassign 16 2
Oliver Groß
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