Sunday, 5 June 2011

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty - Slow Alt+Tab Window Switcher

If you regularly use the Alt+Tab window switcher, and find it is annoyingly slow to launch, simply go into the Compiz Config Settings Manager (you will need to install this if you havent already - it's in the repos), and look under Window Management > Static Application Switcher and then click the Behaviour tab, and set the Popup Window Delay to 0.

Rather odd that it would be set to anything else if you ask me...

14 comments:

  1. Thank you for this, the delay was annoying me intensely, and I have to agree with your last comment... Why would anyone want a delay?

    Cheers :-)

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  2. I've tried this but alt+tab is still very slow, as is minimize/maximize. Is there anything else I can do?

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  3. it works, thanks!

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  4. Also for me it feels faster now. Thanks.

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  5. Thanks, it is faster for me now

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  6. Thanks, just what I was looking for as well. Who in their right mind would like a delay on this?

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  7. The worst thing is that it changes the focus of the windows as you Alt+Tab, which makes it worse. I would like to disable that behaviour. The "Cool Switcher" in Windows XP works like this, and it is fast!

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  8. Works great, many thanks.

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  9. There is research that reducing delays improves performance even when the delays were below human response time. When I see slow response on things like window switching, it makes me think the whole OS must be inefficient. I only installed Natty recently, and I was starting to get that impression. It's like swimming in molasses. Whatever possessed people to add long delays to something that should be instant?

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  10. Thank you thank you. I thought the slowness was due to some of the other 11.04 slowness that has been reported. Was extremely surprised to find out that the alt-tab slowness was not this but a poor Compiz default setting.

    Cheers!

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  11. Thank you so much. I've been HATING gnome-ubuntu (didn't really know who to blame) for months until today. Now it's fine :)


    Geez,why did it take me so long to google this?

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  12. Wow, I was about to ditch Linux Mint because of this.  What a ridiculous default setting, seriously.

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  13. Jesus Christ in heaven and all his minions..
    THANKS so much for this, I was going mad here.

    I've reading the most insane explanations to this issue, usually something like 'your hardware is probably not good enough'.

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  14. Ryan Shillington26 March 2012 at 22:40

    Wow, that is really terrible.  

    Here's another pro trick.  If you're sick of seeing every stupid pop-up dialog when you alt-tab, change "Switcher windows" on that same screen to just "Normal | Unknown".  Then alt-tab works a lot more like Windows.

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