MATE: mate-panel 1.26.1 bug, Window List and Workplace Switcher crash

[Bill Statler]

So, there's a known bug in mate-panel 1.26.1 that has not yet been fixed:

wnck-applet crashes randomly since update to 1.26
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/1246

wnck-applet suddenly stops
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/1268

The symptom is that the Window List and Workplace Switcher panel applets crash at random times.

Three months ago, somebody tracked down the problem to two specific commits in applets/wncklet/window-list.c
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/commit/c4a5e775da5b592e82a79fcb5e09b1f2fe86567a
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/commit/06292db3c2b9a4ad81c7063c7bcff7cb6c0f927a

But apparently nobody has yet found out why these commits are bad, or fixed the problem.

MATE 1.26.1 arrived in the Debian testing repository on 2021-12-14, so my latest Sparky 7 system update installed the buggy version of mate-panel.

I'm wondering whether any of you have run into this problem, and how you handled it. I was hoping I could just downgrade mate-panel (along with mate-panel-common and libmate-panel-applet-4-1). Unfortunately it looks like I would need to downgrade all of MATE, because of dependencies.

Or I could build my own mate-panel package, reverting the two bad commits. I've never tried anything like that before, but I could learn.

Or I could dump MATE and switch to something else.

Any thoughts?

[21grams]

If you have witnessed this issue and is problematic, perhaps stable. Testing can at times be .. well, testing.

Have not had this issue but reading through commits, some changes pushed in github earlier this year could be geared for failures.

[Bill Statler]

If you have witnessed this issue and is problematic, perhaps stable. Testing can at times be .. well, testing.

Yes, this isn't the first time I've had a 'testing' problem. But 'stable' is so boring, what with nothing ever breaking. ;D

I'm not a programmer, but I noticed that both of the bad commits are in the 'preview_window_thumbnail' function. So I tried turning off window thumbnails in the Window List applet preferences. It's too soon to be certain, but there have been no more crashes after a few hours of use. So this might be a viable workaround.

[21grams]

.. But 'stable' is so boring, what with nothing ever breaking.

I hear you.
I hope your solution continues to be profitable.
All the best for the new year.

[Bill Statler]

I'm going to declare probable success with my workaround (turning off Window List preview thumbnails). Zero crashes since I did this.

In case anyone has trouble locating this setting:

• In your panel, find the 3 vertical dots just to the left of the Window List. Right-click on this, and select Preferences.
• In the Window Thumbnails section, select "Hide thumbnails on hover", and Close.

[tuatha-solas]

Thank you for your workaround instructions. Great to prevent any glitches! :-)

[Bill Statler]

So, there's a known bug in mate-panel 1.26.1 that has not yet been fixed...

Followup: The bug is supposed to be fixed with mate-panel 1.26.2.
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/1246#issuecomment-1022323872