Making Metacity 2.14 Usable
Many "power users" object to the direction Gnome has been going for the last few years. Myself, I have generally enjoyed the fact that Gnome "just works" so that I don't have to spend half a day configuring crack smoking options before I have a usable environment. That said, even I admit that window management in Gnome 2.14 is broken. Seriously broken. Kick to the groin broken.
Version 2.14 of Metacity, the Gnome window manager, includes enhanced rules to prevent applications stealing focus. The classic scenario is Gaim popping up a window and stealing keyboard input or hiding another window. Unfortunately, somebody went too far while trying to address this problem. As a side effect, applications launched from the command line end up hiding behind the terminal window.
Thankfully, Ron Yorston has created a patched Metacity RPM for FC5 that fixes the problem. If you're using FC5, the fast way to fix things is to:
su - wget ftp://ftp.tigress.co.uk/pub/gpl/5.0.0/metacity-2.14.0-1.tig3.i386.rpm rpm -Uvh metacity-2.14.0-1.tig3.i386.rpm pkill metacity exit
If you've been bitten by this bug and it made you want to start throwing chairs, be sure to leave a comment in the Gnome Bugzilla ticket. If you're using FC5, I would also encourage you to leave a comment in the Red Hat Bugzilla ticket. Frankly, this bug is embarassing. It should be fixed ASAP, but I'm afraid the developers might be tempted to leave it until Gnome 2.16.
