The checkerboard has never been aligned with the pixels. This isn't
even possible for all zoom ratios since the checkerboard doesn't scale
with the zoom. So you must mean something different. Please take the
time to explain what you see and what you would expect to see. Perhaps
attach a screenshot even.

"The checkerboard has never been aligned with the pixels. This isn't
even possible for all zoom ratios since the checkerboard doesn't scale
with the zoom."

That's very strange because I don't remember being disturbed by it
before, only since I updraded to 1.3.23.

Here is a screenshot of work being done on an icon. As you can see it
is a headache to distinguish actual pixels from the checkerboard here,
especially when translucency is involved (but even without).

It would very nice to have a way to clearly distinguish the
checkerboard (maybe to scroll it slowly as with the walking ants), or
at least have it not interfere with actual image pixel boundaries.

Created attachment 21951 [details]
example screenshot of UI problem

The checkerboard matches the pixels only for a certain subset of zoom
ratios (1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8, ...).

What you are experiencing here is perfectly correct behaviour, but
while it is nice to be able to select (almost) any zoom ratio, it
would be desirable if GIMP would choose more reasonable zoom ratios
when using the Zoom In and Zoom Out menu entries (or their shortcuts).
This is handled in bug #124073.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 124073 ***

Since this isn't addressed in bug #124073, I'm re-opening it.

I'm not sure how this could be handled in a general fashion, apart
from forcing the zoom ratio to constrain itself to powers of 2 when
zooming in & out via the menu items and the magnify tool. Does this
sound like a reasonable solution?

Cheers,
Dave.

I don't think this is a reasonable solution. I rather think this is
not a bug.