While the computer is lagging, keystrokes are buffered so they are applied after the lagging is over. This means that when the user types a word while the computer is lagging, no letters appear on screen during the lag, but the letters typed during the lag appear after the lag is over.

There is one problem: sometimes, when pressing keyboard combinations, the order of keystrokes goes wrong.

For example, when pressing CTRL+V to paste the text "456" after manually typing "123" during a lag, the resulting text after the lag is "456123", while it should be "123456".

Another example: When pressing button combinations in web browsers during a lag, the order is reversed. Pressing Alt+Home goes to the home page and pressing Ctrl+Tab goes to the next tab. When doing so during a lag, it first goes to the next tab and then puts the next tab into "home".

This is one of those annoyances that first seem minor, but become significant due to repetition.

Stop typing when lag starts, resume when it goes away.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, lagging has unpredictable side effects, you need to avoid that.

“Dr. It hurts when I do this”

Some of the keystrokes are handled by the window manager while some - directly by the program e.g. alt-home is the system shortcut while ^tab is browser-specific and handled by the browser, default system shortcut for the next tab is ^pgdn. This could be the reason for reordering under heavy load, try using only system shortcuts. You may redefine them to your liking in system settings, at least in KDE. Won't help for the mixture of shortcuts and plain text, of course.