Mate + wine + nvidia proprietary drivers = not being able to resize games window

Support & Help Requests
#1

hello all, hope everyone is staying safe.

I have an odd behavior going on with mate and wine in a different distro (arch), where I've posted a question that's gone unanswered. thought I'd check other distros to see if the behavior is the same.

I've recently switched to mate and the odd issue I can't figure out is, when I play guild wars 2 in a window, the game starts maximized, even though in my previous DE it was in a window smaller than my desktop size. I cannot resize the window, even though in gw2, I have it set for window mode, I can resize that window in xfce4, however in mate the game starts as a full screen window and when I try to resize it flickers and snaps back to full screen window.

upon further testing, I launched gw2, and then alt tabbed to another app, though that app never appeared in front of gw2, gw2 is always my top most window, even when it doesn't have focus.

does that make sense? has anyone using ubuntu-mate had an experience like this with mate+wine+latest nvidia proprietary drivers?

thanx

--nixit

#2

You need to forgive those guys. Linux is a very mysterious world - there are plenty of unsolved mysteries. Linux - or Linux kernel based operating systems - simultaneously is a very diverse world, which does not particularly help with solving anything.

I imagine the problem dwells either between software and hardware compatibility, or in one particular piece of software itself - which could malfunction - or in compatibility between various different programs, supporting your activity. In other terms, there are a lot of possibilities.

Guys who write on such forums and respond your questions, are oftentimes just enthusiasts. They are home-learned, maybe skilled amateurs. I mean, if you have a hard earned, mature level of skill, verified with a university certificate, you would rather spend the time making profit based around what you have obtained, rather than mess around for free - especially if you have a family and life responsibilities, which do take money to solve. Professional programmer, is a job and you cannot really expect a professional programmer to answer your inquiry each time in the world of Linux. People can take guesses, but how good is a guess, really? Maybe it will work, maybe not. There is simply too much of a topic - Linux is a big world, as I already mentioned - and the fee is none. Linux is a bottom-up initiative, a worldwide community project, good for all and for none.

In other terms, you get it right at the doorstep: there is no guarantee whatsoever. When it comes to WINE technology, it is one of the better things which have happened to Linux - or one of the worst - but programs running under WINE, are also one of the most unstable things out there in the Linux realm, therefore, double the risk you take when using WINE.

If you have no real reason not to use Windows, use Windows to game.

#3

I don't understand your response, alot of words and telling me to use windows, not very helpful.

I've been using linux for many many years, started with ubuntu way back in the early 00's, and I've solved and help with many problems even with wine.

I've never experienced the issue at hand, which is why I was reaching out to see if anyone else had experienced this. If you haven't seen this issue, please don't respond, as you're not helping.

thanx.

#4

I thought your issue regarded also the thing of social response, which I address.

Maybe we misunderstood one another, sorry.

#7

MSX, the original poster requested that you not respond as you apparently have no experience with this problem. If I see any more items like this from you in the future, I will regretfully have to suspend your account. You have been warned. Please take this to heart.

#8

Resize mate window launched by WINE 4.0.

Similar struggles with WinEdt under Linux Wine 4.0 left the Wine explorer shell in the wrong place.
There appears to be no way internal to Wine 4.0 to resize or relocate the Wine shell window. There
is a way to accomplish the resize and relocation of the launched wine app using Linux xdotool.

An example may be enough to communicate the idea:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine" wine explorer.exe /desktop=shell,2280x1045 $HOME/".wine/drive_c/Program Files/WinEdt Team/WinEdt 8/WinEdt.exe" -V -C="Winedt .wine"

Explanation:
Launch WinEdt.exe,which was installed in the default Wine prefix. The app appears inside a Wine windows explorer shell with 96dpi dimensions 2280x1045 on a 27-inch LCD monitor, mate window title "shell - Wine desktop".

Move and resize the Mate window "shell - Wine desktop".
The Linux tool is xdotool, used as follows to keep the current window size but relocate the window to the lower left part of the screen (trial and error to get it properly located).

xdotool search "shell.*Wine.desktop" windowmove 10 360 windowsize 2280 1045

Explanation.
The xdotool search string is a regular expression. So "shell - Wine desktop" has to be tweaked into
regular expression "shell.*Wine.desktop". The search finds the mate window for the wine shell, then the windowmove and windowsize keywords effect the desired relocation and resizing of the mate Wine shell window.