…except that –debug isn’t one of gsd-color’s recognized parameters, and adding it caused GDM to fail to start. I changed it to –verbose which is available.

10.08 jani@saegusa:~$ LC_ALL=C /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-color –help-all
Usage:
gsd-color [OPTION?] color

Help Options:
-h, –help Show help options
–help-all Show all help options
–help-gtk Show GTK+ Options

GTK+ Options
–class=CLASS Program class as used by the window manager
–name=NAME Program name as used by the window manager
–gdk-debug=FLAGS GDK debugging flags to set
–gdk-no-debug=FLAGS GDK debugging flags to unset
–gtk-module=MODULES Load additional GTK+ modules
–g-fatal-warnings Make all warnings fatal
–gtk-debug=FLAGS GTK+ debugging flags to set
–gtk-no-debug=FLAGS GTK+ debugging flags to unset

Application Options:
–exit-time Exit after n seconds time
–dummy-name Name when using the dummy daemon
-v, –verbose Verbose
–display=DISPLAY X display to use

There’s also –gtk-debug and –gdk-debug, but I could do with a little help for what to select for those, as just giving ’all’ seems a little counterproductive (for instance, ”touchscreen” and ”interactive” don’t seem very useful here).

10.03 jani@saegusa:~$ LC_ALL=C /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-color –gtk-debug help
Supported debug values: misc plugsocket text tree updates keybindings multihead modules geometry icontheme printing builder size-request no-css-cache baselines pixel-cache no-pixel-cache interactive touchscreen actions resize layout all help

10.04 jani@saegusa:~$ LC_ALL=C /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-color –gdk-debug help
Supported debug values: events misc dnd xim nograbs input cursor multihead xinerama draw eventloop frames settings opengl all help
Error parsing option –gdk-debug

(Looks like –gdk-debug reports an error with ’help’, despite having just listed it as one of the options.)

Sure, I’ve now set it up thus and will post the results once I hit this again (it seems pretty unpredictable, so could be anything from days to weeks).

Here you go. Had this occur twice in a row just now, so my original theory of the second login never failing was false.

All right. Thanks, Jeremy!

Okay, did it! https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-terminal/issues/30

Some years back (2013/2014 maybe?) the ’New Window’ and ’New Tab’ menu items were combined into a single ’New Terminal’ item.

This apparently met with resistance from users, so Fedora and recently also Ubuntu have chosen to build Gnome terminal with DISUNIFY_NEW_TERMINAL_SECTION to restore the old behavior.

This unfortunately leaves users of those distros, like myself, who actually prefer the simplicity of ’New Terminal’, with no practical way to restore that functionality (beyond rebuilding the package with the compile-time switch reverted).

After hearing me out, the Ubuntu maintainer suggested I file a bug here, asking to turn the compile-time option into a Gsetting so that the behavior could be more easily adjusted per user preferences.

So that is what I’m asking here.

Jeremy: If this is indeed the popular choice then I fully respect that. I just wanted to voice my disgruntlement, since I feel the way this was set by upstream is much simpler. Sorry for being late with it, didn’t realize this was getting overridden before the change already came into effect.

Alright, from my brief testing it would seem this does not reproduce under Wayland.

My recipe above appears to be quite sensitive to details: I have a test user with a clean desktop (with little more customization apart from the extension), and there the recipe works just as written. On the other hand, with my main user account it doesn’t. To clarify: while the steps listed above fail to reproduce the issue with my main account, my main account does manifest the issue too; just not with those exact steps.

My main account starts up the Signal desktop client, Nextcloud client and some other stuff upon login, but so far I haven’t found which of those (if any) causes this difference.

I was, however, able to reproduce the ”see-through hole” effect under both accounts: instead of maximizing Gnome terminal (in step 3), I tile it to cover the left half of my screen, then start up Chrome/Firefox, tile itover the terminal window (i.e. to also cover the left half of the screen), before turning the display off and on again. Firefox then also manifests the hole, as does Gnome terminal when brought back to foreground from below. (Chrome does not manifest the hole, but then again Chrome has always appeared oblivious to the extension here.)

I should mention that I’m leaving the display off for about 4-5 seconds before turning it back on again. I’m not sure if that makes any difference, I’m just doing to to be sure that the ”I’m off” signal has time to propagate back to the system.

I’ve only used Xorg too, but I may be able to try reproducing it under Wayland over the weekend.

Urgh, I’d argue that changing this back *is* a regression. The merged menu item has been the default since (at least) 16.04, and now the cognitive load of opening a new tab has suddenly increased: instead of ”new terminal” I now again have to pick the one I want (which is always tabs for me) from two options each time, instead of just the one.