[ale] Unity focus problem, following link in email

[JD]

12.04 is NOT out of date. It has support until April 2017.
Whereas 13.10 support ends April 2014.

Non-nerds should be running 12.04 Ubuntu to avoid the 6-month update mandate.

Thunderbird settings are binary compatible across UNIX systems, so you can just
copy them over to a new userid and chown -R.

I switched my Mom over to Lubuntu about 5 yrs ago. She used it until her dead
last summer.  Initially, she had a Pentium4 box, but the MB failed on it, so she
was provided with a Core i7 (just moved the HDD over).  She couldn't tell the
difference - what does that say about LXDE?

Might I suggest posting this question on the Ubuntu forums? Many of those folks
are really sharp.

On 12/19/2013 07:55 AM, PairOfTwins wrote:
> JD:
> 
> Yup, I don't use Unity myself, but for an 87 year old, I thought just clicking
> on an icon and having the apps appear one at a time would be easy.  Actually it
> only took her a couple days to stop longing for Win XP.
> 
> Can't find an "always-on-top" setting in Unity, but when I click on any launcher
> except the browser, that comes up, and then the browser will come up when I
> click its launcher!
> 
> Created another user but he has no emails to click on, and anyway --- I saw 3
> "system program problem detected" messages come up, referring to NetworkManager,
> polkitd, and nautilus.  I offered to replace 12.04 with 13.10 and have a fresh
> start.  ( SMART says hard drive is fine, and I check the filesystem for errors)
> 
> Thanks for your input, but I'm out of patience with an out of date system :-)
> 
> Tom
> ==============================================
> On 12/18/2013 06:30 PM, JD wrote:
>> No idea, but I would have swapped out Unity for ... er ... anything else.
>>
>> Don't have that issue with LXDE here. Just tested it. My focus is set to "follow
>> mouse."  I suppose you've checked the settings for "always on top" in firefox
>> and thunderbird and whatever Unity uses to manage that?  I know there is a
>> setting _somewhere_ so windows do not get pulled up unless focus is specifically
>> requested. sorry, don't know where that is.
>>
>> Also - which version of Ubuntu?  12.04.4 or something else?
>>
>> Might be time to move the ~/.mozilla/ directory somewhere else temporarily and
>> see if the problem persists too.
>>
>> Or create a new userid and try it there. That should determine if this is a
>> user-config issue for 1 userid or a system-wide issue.
>>
>> On 12/18/2013 03:45 PM, PairOfTwins wrote:
>>> All:
>>>
>>> Lots of searching and still scratching my head.
>>>
>>> I've got an 87 year old running Ubuntu 12.04 for over a year now :-)  It's fully
>>> updated.
>>>
>>> Lately it developed this problem - she clicks on a link in an email, and nothing
>>> seems to happen.  ACTUALLY Firefox loads the page but doesn't bring it to the
>>> front.  Even when I click on the Firefox launcher, it STILL doesn't come to the
>>> front.  BUT if I click on Home Folder, THEN on Firefox, it comes to the front!
>>>
>>> BTW if I make Chrome the default browser, it acts the same.  If the browser is
>>> not running, the browser comes to the front and displays the page.  If the
>>> browser is already running, it loads the page but my 87-year old doesn't know
>>> it.
>>>
>>> Clues?