Gnome Shell desktop zoom judders and performs badly

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

People like me, with poor eyesight, found a safe heaven in compiz enhanced zoom desktop on Gnome 2. It was customizable, the movements and zoom were smooth and it could be controlled using both keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Many of us felt completely abandoned after the release of Unity in 2010 (yes it had zoom but it was severely limited, see my summary comment and reference to old bug reports here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/762699/comments/18 )

The zoom functionality in Gnome 3 does update the mouse position nearly as often as it should. This results in choppy movements when zoomed in and makes it very hard to read text. It also lacks the ability to zoom in and out using the scroll wheel of the mouse. I'll gladly help out to the best of my ability in order to be able to come home to Ubuntu after exile in KDE-land.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-shell - 3.28.2-0ubuntu1

---------------
gnome-shell (3.28.2-0ubuntu1) cosmic; urgency=medium

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * New upstream release
    - fixes valid password rejection at login screen (LP: #1765261)
  * Drop patches applied upstream:
    - debian/patches/polkitAgent-Guard-against-repeated-close-calls.patch
    - debian/patches/popupMenu-Fix-wrong-call-to-clutter_actor_add_child.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-initialize-porthole-based-on-workArea.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-only-update-_porthole-if-the-overview-.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-rebuild-thumbnails-if-workareas-size-c.patch

  [ Andrea Azzarone ]
  * debian/patches/ubuntu_lock_on_suspend.patch: inhibit suspend until the
    screen is locked also in the case where automatic screen lock is disabled
    and screen lock on suspend is enabled (LP: #1768786)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * Cherry pick upstream patches:
    - debian/patches/st-label-Unset-clutter-text-instance-on-disposal.patch (LP: #1714989)
  * debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Don-t-add-NULL-textures-to-cache.patch:
    - Cherry pick updated version from upstream, splitted in:
    + debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Don-t-add-NULL-textures-to-cache.patch
    + debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Save-cairo-surfaces-to-a-different-map.patch
  * debian/patches/authPrompt-Do-not-enable-sensitivity-if-retries-are-disal.patch
    debian/patches/authPrompt-Unset-preemptiveAnswer-on-reset.patch
    debian/patches/gdm-util-Always-allow-to-retry-login-in-unlock-mode.patch:
    - GDM gnome-shell greeter fix to fix unneeded login attempts (LP: #1777956)
  * debian/patches/series:
    - reorder to apply upstream cherry-picks before the others

  [ Daniel van Vugt ]
  * debian/patches/magnifier.js-Fix-zoom-juddering.patch:
    - magnifier.js: Fix zoom juddering (LP: #1691675)

 -- Marco Trevisan (Treviño) <email address hidden> Thu, 21 Jun 2018 01:59:11 +0200

Hello Daniel, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-shell into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed.Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

Verified. This bug is fixed in 3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-shell - 3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1

---------------
gnome-shell (3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * New upstream release (LP: #1775145)
    - fixes valid password rejection at login screen (LP: #1765261)
  * Drop patches applied upstream:
    - debian/patches/polkitAgent-Guard-against-repeated-close-calls.patch
    - debian/patches/popupMenu-Fix-wrong-call-to-clutter_actor_add_child.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-initialize-porthole-based-on-workArea.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-only-update-_porthole-if-the-overview-.patch
    - debian/patches/workspaceThumbnail-rebuild-thumbnails-if-workareas-size-c.patch

  [ Andrea Azzarone ]
  * debian/patches/ubuntu_lock_on_suspend.patch: inhibit suspend until the
    screen is locked also in the case where automatic screen lock is disabled
    and screen lock on suspend is enabled (LP: #1768786)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * Cherry pick upstream patches:
    - debian/patches/st-label-Unset-clutter-text-instance-on-disposal.patch (LP: #1714989)
  * debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Don-t-add-NULL-textures-to-cache.patch:
    - Cherry pick updated version from upstream, splitted in:
    + debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Don-t-add-NULL-textures-to-cache.patch
    + debian/patches/st-texture-cache-Save-cairo-surfaces-to-a-different-map.patch
  * debian/patches/authPrompt-Do-not-enable-sensitivity-if-retries-are-disal.patch
    debian/patches/authPrompt-Unset-preemptiveAnswer-on-reset.patch
    debian/patches/gdm-util-Always-allow-to-retry-login-in-unlock-mode.patch:
    - GDM gnome-shell greeter fix to fix unneeded login attempts (LP: #1777956)
  * debian/patches/series:
    - reorder to apply upstream cherry-picks before the others

  [ Daniel van Vugt ]
  * debian/patches/magnifier.js-Fix-zoom-juddering.patch:
    - magnifier.js: Fix zoom juddering (LP: #1691675)

 -- Marco Trevisan <email address hidden> Tue, 21 Jun 2018 01:45:42 +0200

The verification of the Stable Release Update for gnome-shell has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.