Stop grabbing my keyboard :(

[RealNC]

The majority of Windows games stopped crashing while Atl+Tabbing after the Windows 98 days were over. That's not an issue anymore. I take it now for granted that I can task switch while a game is running. And when I can't, I'm pretty heavily annoyed.

[deanjo]

Windows games use most of the time DirectX for input processing which bypasses the windows input processing. As a result the games can totally block you from getting out of them or get in trouble if you manage to escape them. Under Linux input goes through X and you do not bypass the input ( if the game is written in a sane way ). You can avoid DX for input processing on Windows which puts you up on the same level as Linux doing proper input handling. Besides there is no sane reason to try to bypass X input in Linux to do a game.

Still doesn't change the fact that the very few ever do and the "real world" that you are presenting is more of a case of "bizzaro world". It's been quite literally years since I have had a game in windows lock out alt-tab and if they do exist they usually issue a patch to fix it so that you can.

[deanjo]

The majority of Windows games stopped crashing while Atl+Tabbing after the Windows 98 days were over. That's not an issue anymore. I take it now for granted that I can task switch while a game is running. And when I can't, I'm pretty heavily annoyed.

Bingo, we have a winner.....

[Setlec]

here are some games that you can't alt+tab on windows and linux:
ETQW, doom3, nwn (linux might be bugged for me), world of goo.
multimedia key tends to become nullmedia key

[L33F3R]

tech3 games aswell. WOLF:ET loved to be a pain in my rear

[Setlec]

oO really? never thought about alt tab in this game b4...

[val-gaav]

There needs to be a better balance for
However, some key combos will disrupt gaming, such as workspace switching ( CTRL + ALT + <DIRECTION> ).

Not to mention that this shortcut is window manager specific. For example in KDE4 with kwin you change workspaces with ctrl+F1, ctrl+F2, ctrl+F3 ... etc.

To work around these shortcomings, I like to create scripts for all my games to launch in a seperate X Displays.

With the current state of drivers AFAIK that would work only with nvidia binary drivers and maybe intel with kms and dri2...

On topic though I think alt+ TAB should just work, playing in windowed mode or on another X display is not a solution. Alt+TAB should simply just work.

[poofyyoda]

With the current state of drivers AFAIK that would work only with nvidia binary drivers and maybe intel with kms and dri2...

Well, I actually almost exclusively use ATI cards, and 9.7 was the only driver I've used that has ever broken that usage. For that reason I just stayed on the 9.6 version, and hoping they get it sorted out for 9.8+.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it works on the opensource ATI driver also, but IIRC intel crashed on me, but that was when their driver was in a very sorry state. Though, I'm pretty sure that gamers won't be using intel graphics

[NeoBrain]

http://www.alientrap.org/forum/viewt...42389724feca6b

This has been somewhat useful for me, esp. since it works for every game that supports windowed mode (which should cover 99% of existing apps).

The only problem seems to be fglrx, which keeps drawing the game's window even if it is minimized (worked once, but since 9.2 or something it does not). It does that also for the games, which support "real" minimizing, though...

[M1AU]

+1
Please developers, don't grab our keyboard when playing fullscreen games on Linux.

Big thanks at this point to S2Games, which seems to handle alt+tab quite nicely in there games!