So at the beginning of this year I setup a MAME system on Linux at the company I work for using Attract Mode. It's very popular and I've had some request for changes, I built a new parallel system to replace the old one. The old one works perfectly, the new one isn't quite doing right despite basically duplicating the setup.
The long story short - it works, but after I launch a game using the configuration I used before Attract Mode is "out of focus" and even clicking with the mouse / hitting ALT+TAB won't bring it back in, I have to kill X and re-login.
If I use a full blown Window manager I don't have that particular issue BUT simply playing a game causes weird issues like program/virtual desktop switching.
The way I set it up that worked on the OLD system - I compiled Attract Mode myself, I can't recall if I compiled MAME myself or not.
Linux LIND067 4.2.0-28-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 1 23:09:27 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
M.A.M.E. v0.160 (Mar 31 2015) - Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
Attract-Mode 1.6.2 (Linux, SFML 2.3 +SWF +7z)
I used TinyWM as the Window manager with these files setup:
/usr/bin/tinywm-session
#!/bin/sh
xsetroot -solid "#000000"
xrdb -load /root/.Xdefaults
attract
exec /usr/bin/tinywm
/usr/share/xsessions/tinywm-session.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Tinywm session
Comment=Ridiculously tiny window manager
Exec=tinywm-session
Terminal=False
TryExec=tinywm
Type=Application
[Window Manager]
SessionManaged=true
The system that DOES NOT work properly:
Linux LIND005 4.13.0-16-generic #19-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 11 18:35:14 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
MAME v0.191 (unknown)
Attract-Mode v2.2.1 (Linux, SFML 2.4 +FontConfig +Xinerama +SWF +7z)
The two config files on this machine are the same, except that I had to put the full path to launch Attract Mode for some reaon.
I have a theory that TinyWM is hosed up, at least in relation to this distro version so I'm going to start experimenting with other minimal window managers, but if anyone has an easy fix please share.
Also, this is my first post - I'm the oldest pecosdave on the web, so if you start looking you'll probably find me all over the place. I used to be the ONLY pecosdave on the web, but first a gambler then a porn-king started calling themselves by my name, so those two results and a couple of weird Sony things aren't me.