Windows button on keyboard

Question

When I had windows my windows button worked like if you was in a game and needed to read somting or something else not in game you could press the windows button, and you did not close the whole game, in ubuntu when you take a screenshot or press the windows button, I can't get in game again. I have to restart the game, is there anny possibilty to change it, so it works just the same as in windows? I like ubuntu, wont change.

Answer 1

Well there is no effective solution to this problem. It happens because the graphics back-end of Linux--the X window system--is very old software and was not built with this capability. It seems that a new graphics back-end is being developed, but until so, people have resigned to using workarounds.

The workaround

You can run the game in an X window other than the desktop's, and change between one and the other with the X window hotkeys, that go from ControlAltF1..F9 (or so it seems).

To open a new X window, you can follow these steps:

1. Press ControlAltF1
2. Run xinit -- :1. This will open a new X window in display :1 (your desktop is currently addressed with display :0). You will be now taken to a black screen, with a small white terminal.
3. Now run ck-launch-session, this will enable audio.
4. Optionally you can use the setxkbmap program to use your keyboard settings in the new window, but you'll have to look into that yourself. I use setxkbmap -layout "us" -variant "altgr-intel", but that's me.

5. Now run your game through the terminal.

   • You can return to your desktop pressing ControlAltF7
   • You can return to your game pressing ControlAltF8