As far as I am aware it's how the game interacts with X itself. Something like going directly to the display server rather than through the window manager.

It's not exactly Alt-Tab, and I cannot guarantee it working on non-debian-based distros, but here's a workaround for this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2101504

I haven't tried the launcher GUI, I'm only using the manual way, but it works nicely on my Ubuntu Quantal 64bit. :)

That's pretty much exactly what I do if I know I will need my desktop. Just start a second X server, startx --:1 from TTY2 opens a second X server on TTY8 for me, so I can just use ctrl+alt+F8 to get to a desktop.

If you wanted to have firefox open on that display though, you would need to make sure it was closed on your regular X.

I don't see much point in wrapping that around a script though personally.

SDL supports going out of a game by pressing Alt-Enter and then releasing the mouse with Ctrl-G. I have also heard that SDL2 has features that are trying to improve Alt-Tab support, and that it already should show in Valve's game ports (as they did have the foresight to promote SDL2). Torchlight also uses SDL2.

Quoting: HamishSDL supports going out of a game by pressing Alt-Enter and then releasing the mouse with Ctrl-G. I have also heard that SDL2 has features that are trying to improve Alt-Tab support, and that it already should show in Valve's game ports (as they did have the foresight to promote SDL2). Torchlight also uses SDL2.

To be fair, I can super-a (my alt-tab) out of all of Valves games without an issue already -- though I've not tried alt-enter, that's *usually* the fullscreen switch on Windows games.

Ah so the Valve titles are using SDL2? I was wandering how they alt+tab so perfectly compared to a lot of other games!

Quoting: muntdefemsIt's not exactly Alt-Tab, and I cannot guarantee it working on non-debian-based distros, but here's a workaround for this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2101504

I haven't tried the launcher GUI, I'm only using the manual way, but it works nicely on my Ubuntu Quantal 64bit. :)

How to make it much more simple:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Running_program_in_separate_X_display

I cannot game without xrun ;)

Most games also support alt+enter to go in and out of full screen.

Ive had issues in good ol Gnome where TF2 will shrink its window if you alt tab while its loading and so when you come back to it its trying to render 1080p graphics inside a 640x480 window. I found that enough clicking in and out of the window brings it back. I guess this is another reason why we need wayland.

Maybe not Wayland as I was under the impression that this was something is handled by and fixed in SDL2.

Not that we needed any more reasons to support Wayland. ;)