New update is riddled with bugs

[jesperh1]

Distribution

Arch Linux

Package version

Cinnamon 6.6.3

Graphics hardware in use

No response

Frequency

Always

Bug description

New Cinnamon version since the new application launcher is riddled with bugs. Opening a terminal window by keyboard shortcut doesn't make the window active so I can't just start typing. I have to manually click the terminal window for it to start working.

Keyboard selector seems to be broken, the show less common layouts toggle needs to be clicked multiple times to work and then I can't add the layout after actually finding it.

And the new application launcher is not an improvement. This is just an overall terrible "upgrade" and I really hope you decide to roll it back because this is simply broken and worse.

Steps to reproduce

Try and add English (Western ...n AltGr dead keys) keyboard layout

Expected behavior

It should actually work, my keyboard layout should be added and my terminal windows should be working as soon as they're launched by keyboard shortcut.

Additional information

No response

[ranolfi]

the new application launcher is not an improvement

Do you mean the Menu? If yes, I totally agree.

[dahoehn]

The terminal not being active is very annoying, i would appreciate a fix for that especially.

[uzuto]

Any fix for this, Alacritty losing focus has been pain for me.
Other terminals like kitty and ghostty doesn't lose focus upon lauch but alacritty does.

UPDATE:

Workaround: use xdotool to bypass muffin and directly connect to Xserver

#!/bin/bash
# terminalemulator exec
alacritty &

for i in {1..20}; do
    WIN_ID=$(xdotool search --class "Alacritty" | tail -1) # get classname with xprop
    
    if [ -n "$WIN_ID" ]; then
        sleep 0.1
        
        xdotool windowactivate "$WIN_ID"
        xdotool windowraise "$WIN_ID"
        
        exit 0
    fi
    sleep 0.1
done

[jesperh1]

The script only works properly when you don't already have other Alacritty windows open. It's common for me to have a lot of them open, so sadly this won't fix the problem for me. But thanks for sharing.

Hopefully they'll publish a proper fix soon, I can live with the menu downgrade, but my terminal not being launched with focus is unbearable.

I fixed the keyboard issue I mentioned with sudo localectl set-x11-keymap us pc105 altgr-weur although I experienced ones that it stopped working properly, but adding a new random keyboard layout in the keyboard settings and removing it again seemed to fix it.

On another note there has also been problems when resuming from suspend where the screen scaling, refresh rate and placement of monitors is all messed up with my 2nd monitor even being set to off at times. Not to mention cinnamon seems to have problems shutting down or going to suspend at times either dropping me to the login screen where I can then turn it off or leaving me to type systemctl suspend -i to get it to suspend.

It's really quite a shame because Cinnamon still seems to be the best desktop environment. XFCE and Mate can both be made quite good but requires a ton of customization and they seem to be missing some features still like proper fractional scaling.

It would have been nice if the Cinnamon team had focused on fixing issues and implementing new useful features like native external monitor brightness changing which is a feature on KDE and possible on Cinnamon with an applet instead of doing whatever this is.

[uzuto]

jesperh1 Try this

#!/bin/bash

OLD_IDS=$(xdotool search --class "Alacritty" 2>/dev/null | sort)
alacritty &

for i in {1..20}; do
    CURRENT_IDS=$(xdotool search --class "Alacritty" 2>/dev/null | sort)
    NEW_ID=$(comm -13 <(echo "$OLD_IDS") <(echo "$CURRENT_IDS") | head -n 1)

    if [ -n "$NEW_ID" ]; then
        sleep 0.15
        xdotool windowactivate "$NEW_ID"
        xdotool windowraise "$NEW_ID"
        exit 0
    fi
    sleep 0.1
done

LAST_EXISTING=$(xdotool search --class "Alacritty" | tail -1)
if [ -n "$LAST_EXISTING" ]; then
    xdotool windowactivate "$LAST_EXISTING"
fi

For menu, I would recommend Cinnamenu applet over the default menu.

[jesperh1]

Thanks, that seemed to work great.

[JosephMcc]

Open separate issues for each problem with a description of how to reproduce it. This reads more like a discussion. There is quite possibly already an open issue tied to the keyboard layout issues as those had a bunch of changes.