What do you mean? I have been using focus-follows-mouse since the late 1990s and have never noticed a program that was incompatible with it.

It's usually some commercial programs that have issues.. I was going to try it and give a more specific answer, but Ubuntu does not let me run twm. I get a blank screen when I log in with twm selected.

You very likely have twm running and no other programs. Clicking on the empty desktop ought to get you a menu.

So this is what's happening, but it's still messed up. The menus appear, but don't disappear, so pretty soon I have 20 menus all over the screen. Also no mouse pointer until I click. Also, the menu entries don't do anything (yes, I'm holding until the entry is selected, then releasing).

Anyway I tried it in vnc4server, where it does work, though you have to start it with LANG=C. But now I can't find any programs that are not working.. I'll have to use it for a while.

I never had problems wir Focus follows mouse in XWindow and like the feature very much.

I've even used a program that did the same for Windows (that sometimes had issues as the windows programs didn't expect that the activ window was not on top). I didn't remember the name of the program but this [1] sounds close.

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/954021/how-do-you-enable-foc...

I tried using focus-follows-mouse on mac (yabai allows this even without disabling SIP)... it wasn't a good experience because the menu bar is always at the top, so I was always traversing over several other apps to get to the menu bar... and I'd forget to mouse back to the app I was working in when I was done menu-ing.

Focus follows mouse is a must have for me, to really make it work it needs to be paired with "don't raise on click".

The next step in the progression to find a more usable desktop configuration is to admit that overlapping windows don't do much for you and go full tiling mode. I will admit of these three options tiling mode has the most chance to break applications. So depending on what applications you use most it may not be for you.

> I used to set it up without title bars. You had to know my personal shortcuts to use my desktop.

That's my setup in XFCE. Actually I just need two shortcuts: Alt-F4 and Alt-F9 to minify or close a window. And Alt to move the windows.

I use focus-follows-mouse (in fvwm), and the only app I can recall has any problem is Steam, in which the menus disappear if the mouse goes outside the steam window (or perhaps outside the menu, don't remember the details).