I can not reproduce it on my Linux system.

I've never seen that problem occurring on any of my systems.
I just tried on different Linux, including a Linux 64, and it maximimizes just fine on them.

Now remember that the maximizing is not done by the application, we don't have any code for that per se, it's not actually even done by Tk, it's a task that is left to the window manager: you may be running Gnome or KDE, and that is the component responsible for drawing the window decoration, the maximize/minimize buttons, and the corresponding functionalities.

The only unknown here is the size of the screen, which I've heard is huge. It could be possible that this version of your window manager just can not handle such a large resolution (is it about 2500x1024?). When maximizing, the window manager may find that value either too large to be "real" and not do anything besides disabling the button, or maybe there isn't enough resources to create such a large window with a 3D context, I don't really know, but this is possible.

One thing you could do:

• take a "normal" screen, hook it up to that Linux 64 system, reboot, check that screen resolution is back to normal (say around 1200x1024), and try maximizing. That sounds like a valid test to perform.

And here are a few other tidbits that would help:

• on the big screen, try creating any Tk window/toplevel, and see if it maximizes
• report the Linux version and operating system kernel
• which version of KDE or Gnome are you using so that we can google if people have reported such problems on large screen as well
• make sure you are using the Tcl/Tk in Slicer3, i.e. that Slicer3 is not picking another shared library (try 'ldd')

I've tried a few things this morning using:

• Linux-64 (fedora)
• KDE 3.0
• Gnome 2.14.3
• monitor has resolution 1900x1200, can be reset to 1280x1024:

The same results occur with KDE and Gnome. Using KDE,
Slicer's and KWWidgetTourExample's windows don't display
the 'maximize' icon, and the option to maximize is disabled
in the window's pulldown. Tk toplevels (and other application
windows) appear fine. Here's the rundown:

                            MAXIMIZE?  

Slicer3 with 1900x1200 no
Slicer3 with 1280x1024 no
KWWidgetsTour with 1900x1200 no
KWWidgetsTour with 1280x1024 no
tk toplevel with 1900x1200 yes
tk toplevel with 1280x1024 yes
other application windows yes

One additional experiment: Slicer2 also runs under KDE with the same problem! I get a Slicer2 window without a maximize icon, and with no maximize option in the pulldown.

We've determined that this is a problem with the Tcl/Tk version we're using with Slicer3. (The problem seems to have been fixed in Tcl/Tk 8.4.7). Rather than move to a new version of Tcl/Tk before release, we've decided to defer this until we have a chance to test it out on all platforms.

Related to the version of Tk - need to doublecheck. getbuildtest2 uses latest TK and need to move that to the release getbuildtest also.