Posted on by Martin Flöser

Fixing Slow Window Movment in 4.9

Unfortunately a small bug entered 4.9: when using an Aurorae theme moving the window through the titlebar is delayed. It’s a bug we discovered a few days after the final tagging through the work on porting Plastik to QML.

Since the release we had quite a lot of bug reports for this issue and I have seen some forum threads about this issue. It is already fixed for 4.9.1 but this might be a little bit too late.

As the bug is just in the QML component, everybody is able to fix it localy. In order to do so follow these steps:

cd /tmp
wget https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde-workspace/repository/revisions/9ee6a775d592ec3f105892c32c7576d6cdd7c210/diff/kwin/clients/aurorae/src/qml/aurorae.qml?format=diff
cd /usr/share/kde4/apps/kwin/aurorae/
sudo patch -p6 -i /tmp/aurorae.qml\?format\=diff

And now restart kwin. Just use KRunner and type
kwin --replace

Please be aware that any distribution update for kwin will overwrite the local change and please note that depending on your distribution the path might be different (the path is taken from the Ubuntu package).

If you don’t want to experience such regressions in 4.10 I recommend to test the beta releases. The issue had been introduced in January or February and nobody had noticed (I use Aurorae but don’t move windows through the titlebar). I’m really surprised to see this issue being reported so often after the release that I have to write a blog post.

A small service announcment: as you might have noticed I did not write a this week in KWin post. I currently have a reduced connectivity which means the system having the xslt does not have Internet. So next week I will cover both weeks.

15 Replies to “Fixing Slow Window Movment in 4.9”

  1. I use Aurorae but don’t move windows through the titlebar

    This is cool because you’re the main developer yet you confess not to test not only all the features of your software, but one of the main ones!

    1. it might be a main feature for you, but it is a not really important feature to me. I prefer moving windows through the window content. And of course I cannot test all features. KWin core has about 50 options, we have 40 effects most of them with at least two or three options. Just do the math: it’s impossible to test all of them.

      That’s why we have public beta tests to notice the bugs the developers do not notice.

  2. For Gentoo users (and probably others distros as well), you can find the aurorae.qml file in the following directory instead:
    /usr/share/apps/kwin/aurorae/

    If it’s neither of those, find it with:
    find /usr/ -type f -iname *aurorae*

    Regards.

    1. no, not yet, it will be mentioned in the next this week of KWin post. I did unfortunately not have the time to look at it and I want to do a proper ABI test…

  4. To be honest I hadn’t really noticed, since I don’t move windows around too much. I just thought my computer was being slow for some reason. But now that I used your patch, I’ll have to pay attention and see if I notice any difference.

  6. I wonder if it will overtime become less impossible to write tests for such things? is it really that impossible to write a framework that would allow automated testing of these tasks? Things like Selenium exist for the web, is it possible to do UI testing in a similar fashion?

  7. A nasty bug, but the fact that it can be fixed simply by replacing a single text file really shows the beauty of QML. Not only makes it easier to deploy quick fixes like this but it also enables users (that know QML) to track and fix the bugs they find themselves, without the need to compile. Over time, I’d expect the adoption of QML to lead to better bug reports…

  8. Unable to connect to server. Going to http instead of https, I get:

    “projects.kde.org and notes.kde.org are down due to a hardware malfunction. We’re getting them back up and running ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience!”

    In the meantime, if you switch your window decoration theme to Plastik, Oxygen, B II Preview or Laptop it works fine.

  9. Great! Thanks so much for the fix. I just updated to 4.9 on Kubuntu (Netrunner actually) tonight and thought I was going nuts with this windows dragging bug. I thought it was some kind of odd new feature at first 😉 The fix worked absolutely perfectly.

  10. Thanks a lot.. i started to be crazy with this delay) .. it worked for me and archlinux , path is /usr/share/apps/kwin/aurorae here.

    if somebody could give me a hint to restore the middle mouse button feature to combine windows.. i would be very happy:) Thanks!

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