Issue report: Steam dialogs and windows appear behind main window (KWin)

[nxtzh]

I am using KDE on Kubuntu 12.04. When I click a menu item that opens a new window such as View Friends List or Settings, the newly opened window is obscured by the main window.

Disabling KWin's focus stealing prevention feature (System Settings => Window Behavior => Window Behavior => Focus stealing prevention level) makes the problem go away (at least until I re-enable it to deal with some other less-user-friendly programs). I normally use the default setting (Low) and most applications, including those that have modal and modeless dialogs, do not have a problem with it.

For now, I have added a focus stealing exception for windows with the class "Steam".

I do not know all the details of KWin's focus stealing protection, but thanks to xwininfo and xprop I have discovered a potential issue: The Steam windows don't have the WM_CLIENT_LEADER and WM_TRANSIENT_FOR attributes that normally allow the window manager to know that they are related. According to some possibly unreliable forum/blog posts, WM_CLASS, _NET_WM_PID, WM_CLIENT_MACHINE must also match to make the focus stealing prevention work correctly.


Processor Information:
Vendor: GenuineIntel
Speed: 3301 Mhz
4 logical processors
4 physical processors
HyperThreading: Unsupported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Unsupported
SSE41: Supported
SSE42: Supported

Network Information:
Network Speed:

Operating System Version:
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 3.2.0-29-generic
X Server vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server release: 11103000

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Driver Version: 4.3.0 NVIDIA 310.14
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 59 Hz
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1200
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Primary Display Size: 20.39" x 12.76" (24.02" diag)
51.8cm x 32.4cm (61.0cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 1023 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x 16x

Sound card:
Audio device:

Memory:
RAM: 16027 Mb

Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
LANG: en_US.UTF-8
Microphone: Not set
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 9968 Mb
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 8081 Mb

Installed software:

Recent Failure Reports:

[kenharkey7]

Also running kubuntu 12.10 32bit, I can confirm that the window does indeed appear behind the main window

[Grigi]

Same issue Confirmed, on a Gentoo 64-bit with KDE 4.9.3, and AMD 12.11beta11 drivers on a Mobility Radeon HD7770.
The issue seems to occur with Friends & Settings, but not the application installation/properties windows.

[thepanu]

I also confirm this occuring. 64bit Archlinux running KDE 4.9.4. NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTS 250/PCIe/SSE2.

[Knnniggit]

I can confirm the window behavior on Kubuntu 12.04 64-bit.

Thanks for the tip, nxtzh, that solved it for now.