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Steam For Linux Beta Finally Fixes Post-Login Annoyance

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  • #11
    Excellent. This has been annoying for sure - I have my gaming PC setup to auto-login and launch Steam. I use wake-on-lan from my laptop to fire it up, and stream to my Steam Link in the lounge. But since this bug, I often have to walk to my study and hit "cancel" on that password dialog. Depends on whether the password dialog obscures the game window (usually it does). Using seahorse to set a blank password doesn't seem to stick. I look forward to the fix making it to stable.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by ssokolow View Post

      Which window manager are you using? Apparently that's enough of a problem across various applications that various WMs have focus-stealing prevention functionality. (And I suspect it's also one of the inspirations for Wayland's push to de-privilege applications.)
      I've had this on openbox, xfwm, mutter and also windows 7,8,10 so it's not related to a single manager, not even the OS. If any can handle it, it's probably a workaround.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by eydee View Post
        They should also fix pre-login annoyance. After so many years, the client still steals focus 147613 times until it fully starts up.
        I hear you brother. That really piss me off sometimes.

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        • #14
          The keyring situation is quite annoying. Even a hint of GNOME in my system makes launching chromium a nightmare that requires workarounds, and then there's software like the official mysql GUI manager, which refuses to work without a keyring.
          Some people simply don't use such software, especially because it's GUI.

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          • #15
            Hmm, I'm using Steam on kde, but never heard about this issue. Btw, I don't use the keyring thing. Never even set an empty password in the keyring.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by eydee View Post

              I've had this on openbox, xfwm, mutter and also windows 7,8,10 so it's not related to a single manager, not even the OS. If any can handle it, it's probably a workaround.
              KDE has the most advanced focus-stealing prevention I'm aware of.

              Openbox has <focusNew>no</focusNew>, but I'm not sure if it's possible to use it in per-application settings and I don't know if it has any way to prevent an existing window from reclaiming focus.

              Compiz has configurable focus-stealing prevention which can stop focus-stealing by existing windows. An Arch user claims it can't prevent the creation of a new window from stealing focus automatically but an un-cited entry on the "Focus stealing" Wikipedia page disagrees.

              This stackexchange answer is a good starting point for what Xfce has, but I don't see any sign that it's possible to configure it on a per-application basis.

              Metacity also had basic focus-stealing prevention that could probably be pressed into service by launching Steam from a terminal window:

              I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 and I have the window manager configured for "focus follows mouse" but new application windows will steal the focus. Seems like there are many threads out there complaining...


              ...and yes, focus-stealing prevention is inherently a workaround for the bad idea of giving applications so much power over their behaviour in the greater desktop... similar to how X11 applications accomplished resolution changes using the same API meant for use by control panels to modify the resolution for the duration of the session.

              That's why, in Wayland, the goal was to design APIs that couldn't be abused like that. (e.g. Allowing pseudo-resolution-changing fullscreening scoped to the lifetime of the requesting window and promising but never delivering a security model to allow non-builtin control panels to make permanent changes to resolution settings and the like.)

              I believe the Wayland APIs make it so all the compositor has to be smart about is identifying whether it's more desirable for a newly-created window to steal focus (eg. a task launcher triggered by a global hotkey) or be suppressed (eg. you're in the middle of typing into the window that currently has focus).
              Last edited by ssokolow; 04 March 2020, 03:53 PM.

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              • #17
                And also be aware of what's happening, even if it's a manual launch. It usually goes like this:

                You start Steam. Then as it takes a few seconds or even more, switch to your browser or whatever you're doing. Waiting for it to start up. Steam steals focus with "searching for updates". You click back to your browser. In a few seconds, Steam (sometimes) steals focus "installing update". You click back to your thing again. After some time, Steam steals focus "logging into <account name>". You get pissed, switch again. In a few seconds, Steam steals focus with the booted up Steam client and maybe update news, if you have it enabled. At this point it may still sync with the cloud, upload shaders, look for game updates, etc, so the last focus stealing isn't really justified either. It may take some time until it's actually usable, while you can keep reading or whatever.
                Last edited by eydee; 05 March 2020, 12:34 PM.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by eydee View Post
                  And also be aware of what's happening, even if it's a manual launch. It usually goes like this:

                  You start Steam. Then as it takes a few seconds or even more, switch to your browser or whatever you're doing. Waiting for it to start up. Steam steals focus with "searching for updates". You click back to your browser. In a few seconds, Steam (sometimes) steals focus "installing update". You click back to your thing again. After some time, Steam steals focus "logging into <account name>". You get pissed, switch again. In a few seconds, Steam steals focus with the booted up Steam client and maybe update news, if you have it enabled. At this point it may still sync with the cloud, upload shaders, look for game updates, etc, so the last focus stealing isn't really justified either. It may take some time until it's actually usable, while you can keep reading or whatever.
                  This takes me to another, much older steam annoyance: It downloads updates on the background, without telling you anywhere (it won't show in downloads). Its not possible to stop them, unless you block access to steam servers, such as resolving to null client-download.steampowered.com media.steampowered.com in /etc/hosts. This is a serious problem when your bandwidth is limited. Once Steam updates to that chromium version that uses google's dns servers by default, i guess a firewall rule will be needed instead...

                  I'm quite familiar with that prompt for password at start Chromium annoyance since i use XFCE without any keyrings. With chromium you fix it by passing the --password-store=basic command line, so when it showed in Steam after that major cosmetic overhaul, i wasn't the least surprised, but sure is annoying. I didn't know it happened in windows too...

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