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Xubuntu + Compiz = Pretty pretty Xubuntu

Published 9 December 2007 Software , Xubuntu
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With the release of Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, Xubuntu looks better than ever. However, it can look better still, with the breathtaking effects provided by Compiz. How would you like all your windows zooming out into little thumbnails to give you an overview a la Mac OS X’s Exposé? Or what about flipping through your windows Cover Flow-style (or Flip 3D-style, for that matter)? And then you haven’t even experienced the joy of your windows casting shadows on your desktop, or wobbling like jelly as you drag them!







And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as there are many more features for you to discover - after you’ve installed it using this guide :).

Preliminary note: your graphics card should support it. Most cards from Nvidia and ATI are supposed to work, as well as some cards from Intel. Most likely you will need to enable the proprietary, non-open source drivers using the Restricted Drivers Manager in Applications->System->Restricted Drivers Manager.

You can check whether you system can run Compiz using Compiz Check.

Before we start, I should also note that Compiz has not made a stable (i.e. 1.0) release, and undoubtly you will experience bugs yourself. This could include the occasional crash, your window borders disappearing (you can get them back by pressing Alt+F2 and entering “emerald” or, if that doesn’t work, “xfwm4″), windows being black in their entirety, or even being thrown out of your graphical environment completely. Be aware of the risks, and don’t blame me if it breaks ;) .

A bit of history would be appropriate, so here goes. You can skip this paragraph if you already know what Compiz and Compiz Fusion are and just want to install them.
Developed within Novell (they bring you SUSE Linux) they released Compiz, a window manager with gorgeous effects to demonstrate their new XGL software which allowed better use of hardware and made these effects possible. Compiz became an independent project and kept adding astonishing new effects. As Red Hat (who bring you Red Hat Linux) developed AIGLX as an alternative to XGL, Compiz didn’t even need XGL anymore. A community formed around Compiz that made lots of useful and not-so-useful (but pretty) additions. One particular group of enhancements were not accepted into the main project and, being open source, a spin-off named Beryl that did include the enhancements was started. Beryl became very popular - perhaps even more popular than Compiz itself. However, both projects were dissatisfied with the duplicate work and found that they could settle their previous arguments. In a re-merge, most of Beryl’s plugins were made to work on Compiz under the name of Compiz Fusion. So now we have Compiz (or Compiz-core), the base system, with Compiz Fusion, which provides many additional, perhaps more experimental, plugins.

We will install Compiz as well as Compiz Fusion from the official software sources which will no longer pull along half of Gnome as it did in the previous version of Xubuntu.

A word of thanks goes out to Forlong who wrote a guide titled “How to install Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu Feisty - tutorial for advanced and/or KDE as well as Xfce users” - about the only guide that explains how to install Compiz on Xubuntu (up until now, that is ;) ). Whereas his tutorial focus[es] mostly on terminal commands I’ll explain it like I usually do - the graphical way, with loads of screenshots. Do use his excellent tutorial if you prefer using terminal commands. Be sure to note, though, that his tutorial is for version 7.04, so you’ll have to replace “feisty” with “gutsy”.

Let’s start, shall we?

Note: If you rather copy and paste a command into a terminal window, use this: sudo apt-get install compiz-core compiz-plugins compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald compizconfig-settings-manager

Fire up Applications->System->Synaptic Package Manager to install the required packages. First of all, we need compiz-core. This is just pure Compiz as opposed to the compiz package which pulls along half of Gnome. Then, of course, we need the plugins that take care of all the bling - don’t worry, you can select which plugins you want to activate ;) . We need the packages compiz-plugins, compiz-fusion-plugins-main and compiz-fusion-plugins-extra. Furthermore, you might like the application to draw the window borders, Emerald, instead of Xubuntu’s default xfwm4 (if you’re unsure, you’ll probably want it). If so, select the package emerald. Last but not least, we need an application to configure Compiz to be usable, so select compizconfig-settings-manager too.
Having selected them all, you can click Apply to start the installation.



Setting it up

Before you can run your newly installed Compiz, you need to configure it a bit. In order to do so, open Applications->Settings->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.



Beneath the “Effects” heading, click Window Decoration. In the Command input field, enter the window decorator you prefer (emerald if you installed that, xfwm4 if not).



Well, that’s about it - let’s try running it!

Running Compiz

Only one way to find out whether everything works as expected - run it! In order to do so, press Alt+F2, enter compiz --replace, then click Run. If everything works as it should, you should now see shadows around your windows!





Make it default

Now I’ll just assume that it ran successfully and that you want to have Compiz run by default every time you login. I’ll cover two ways to do that.

The easy-but-inefficient way

Using the first way Compiz will replace your default window manager every time you login. This means that, when you log in, first xfwm4 is ran which will then be replaced by Compiz, so even though xfwm4 is started, it will then be closed again without being used.

For this method, you open Applications->Settings->Autostarted applications.



There, you click Add to create an entry with the following values:

Name:
Compiz Fusion
Description:
Desktop Effects
Command:
compiz --replace

Well, actually, only the last entry really matters ;)



Click OK and you’re done! The next time you login, Compiz will be started automatically.

The more-difficult-but-better way

So… You prefer the scary stuff? Well, it’s not that difficult, actually. You just press Alt+F2 and enter

gksudo "mousepad /etc/xdg/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc"

Basically, that opens the file xfce4-session.rc with root rights with the text editor mousepad.

In this file, all you have to do is replace:

Client0_Command=xfwm4

…with:

Client0_Command=compiz

(Thank Ubuntuforums user sisco311 for this one)

Do note that this makes Compiz default for all users, as opposed to the previous method which made it default just for you.

Take it easy

CompizConfig allows you to tweak a lot of the settings, which might be a bit overwhelming. Therefore you might feel the need for some sane defaults. Luckily, CompizConfig, in the Preferences menu, allows you to import and export profiles.



As you can guess, I’ve exported mine, so go and download it and Import it!

Troubleshooting

It might just be that it does not work for you - please say so using the comment form below, then I can share the solution with the world:

  • If you experience problems that you cannot solve using any of the methods above, you can revert back to Xfwm4. Of course, how to revert depends on the method you used. If you used the easy-but-inefficient way you can simply uncheck the checkbox before Compiz Fusion in Applications->Settings->Autostarted Applications. If you used the more-difficult-but-better way you have to open that configuration file again (gksudo "mousepad /etc/xdg/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc") and replace

    Client0_Command=compiz

    …with:

    Client0_Command=xfwm4

    Note that this will not uninstall Compiz - it will merely disable it.

  • If nothing happens after you have followed all the steps, it might be that you need XGL for it to work (Xubuntu by default includes AIGLX). You can simply install it using Synaptic - look for the package xserver-xgl.
  • If Compiz doesn’t work and you have an Nvidia graphics card, then you may need to make sure it is configured correctly. You can do so by pressing Alt+F2, typing sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24 and pressing “Run”. With thanks to Ransom’s comment.
  • If you are left with just one desktop, you have to set the “Horizontal Virtual Size” in General Options->Desktop Size in the Cube settings.
  • Crewe did not have window decorations. Though the steps he took are quite complicated, and he needed to install Metacity, GNOME’s window manager, he solved his problem. I am not sure whether this will work for you, and it is probably safest to assume it won’t. For those still interested:

    A run down of what I did was first

    installed all the apps I needed:

    sudo apt-get install compiz-core compiz-plugins compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald compizconfig-settings-manager

    I removed nvidia-glx / nvidia-glx-new as they directly conflicted with my nvidia drivers, and put me into “Low Graphics Mode” and caused all sorts of issues with the xserver.

    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx –purge
    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx-new –purge

    respectively.

    installed metacity:

    sudo apt-get install metacity

    restarted the computer (this is key)

    then made sure I had a fully functioning xorg.conf that I created from mish-mashing the generated
    configs from the following commands:

    sudo nvidia-xconfig
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
    nvidia-settings

    and everything was working graphically, and I was using the restricted drivers, with nothing was crashing.

    Then I added these entries to my xorg.conf

    Section “Extensions”
    Option “Composite” “Enable”
    EndSection

    and

    Option “AddARGBVisuals” “True”

    to the Device section

    I then reinstalled the nvidia drivers

    sudo nvidia-installer -f

    -f forces the install, when the install asks you if you want it to generate and xorg for you SAY NO! (You just spent a lot of time creating a working one)

    then restarted the computer again.

    it’s still a bit finicky as I had to run it twice to get it to work, and afterwards I can’t switch back to xfwm4 but it’s I small price to pay.

    UPDATE: I’ve since uninstalled metacity, and everything seems to be working great

Of course, you can always read the comments for this post to read everybody’s problems/solutions or general tips.

That’s all folks!

Just because Xubuntu is speedy doesn’t mean it should not look pretty. With the release of 7.10, finally Compiz is no longer exclusively Ubuntu’s. Enjoy the looks!

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

155 Responses to “Xubuntu + Compiz = Pretty pretty Xubuntu”

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  1. 1 Jos 9 December 2007 at 9:49 pm

    Nice screenshots! ;-)

  2. 2 Papa 9 December 2007 at 10:26 pm

    Nice article Vincent !!

    Papa

  3. 3 hecatae 10 December 2007 at 10:19 pm

    thanks for the profile to import, made setting up my fresh install a breeze, and I no longer need to install gnome for compiz.

  4. 4 xubuntu 11 December 2007 at 3:05 am

    Stop teasing me :(

    Some of us have SIS cards…

  5. 5 iomicifikko 11 December 2007 at 3:11 am

    Hi thanks for this guide. I followed it step by step (well, it is easy) and i can get all the stuff working properly only using emerald window decorator. If i try to use the default xfwm4 (i’d prefer it) compiz starts but no windows dec loads. Any idea? Thanks (are u using compiz or the default composite options in the pictures with the default xubuntu theme?)

  6. 6 Vincent 11 December 2007 at 12:39 pm

    iomicifikko, I use Emerald (use another theme now, though). I’ve ran xfwm4 in my sister’s account though, that worked fine. Have you set xfwm4 in CompizConfig? Also, if you open a terminal window and type “xfwm4″, does that display any errors?
    (If you use IRC, you can also try to ask for help in #xubuntu on FreeNode… Need to do a post on that too ;) )

  7. 7 sy 11 December 2007 at 9:36 pm

    Hi, I did everything and I still do not see any effects. I am using an Intel card if that helps.

    Thanks

  8. 8 Vincent 11 December 2007 at 9:41 pm

    sy, could you open a terminal window (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), type compiz --replace, press enter and then paste here what you got?

  9. 9 sy 11 December 2007 at 9:44 pm

    This is what I got

    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    Blacklisted PCIID ‘8086:2a02′ found
    aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity
    no /usr/bin/metacity found, exiting

  10. 10 Vincent 11 December 2007 at 9:52 pm

    sy, ah, if your card is supported it apparently needs Xgl to be able to run Compiz. I think you can follow this guide for that. For the section where it has a few lines you can copy and paste for Gnome and KDE, the Xfce lines would be:

    #!/bin/sh (-)
    Xgl :1 -fullscreen -ac -accel xv:pbuffer -accel glx:pbuffer &
    DISPLAY=:1
    dbus-launch --exit-with-session xfce4-session

  11. 11 sy 11 December 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Thanks a lot for the quick response!! I will try it now and post if everything went well.

    ( ^__^ ) Oh, and very nice article!

  12. 12 sy 11 December 2007 at 10:02 pm

    Thanks a lot again Vincent. All I had to do was install XGL with the command

    sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

    And it worked perfectly.

    I am hoping to see more articles from you!

  13. 13 Vincent 11 December 2007 at 10:04 pm

    Thanks a lot for the quick response!! - that’s just because I happened to be online ;)

    Great that it worked, and thank you for sharing your result - I’ve added it to the article :)

  14. 14 sy 11 December 2007 at 10:08 pm

    Hahaha, well I guess I am lucky that you happened to be on.

  15. 15 Craig 11 December 2007 at 10:58 pm

    I see you have avant working, my install on xubuntu wont work properly. I just cant seem to add any launchers to it nothing works, i cant drag and drop or use the menu. I’d LOVE to get this working properly just to finish off the eyecandy fest that is xubuntu with compiz. Any help would be appreciated.

    thanks

    Craig

  16. 16 Vincent 11 December 2007 at 11:06 pm

    Craig, I’ve already removed AWN because it was getting too annoying, but anyway…

    I had it working by just installing the package from the Ubuntu repositories, but I later installed the development version of AWN which included many more plugins. You might try that and see if it works.
    (Note: I could drag and drop by opening Thunar, browsing to /usr/share/applications/ and then dragging the application icons from there onto AWN. It’s Xfce that lacks drag-and-drop support from/to the menu and panels.)

  17. 17 Craig 12 December 2007 at 6:10 pm

    Your tip worked a treat, i can see why you dumped it though, it is still a bit ‘glitchy’ half the plaugins dont work properly, but so far its doing what i wasnt it to do. Are there any alternatives that run smoother? Having a dock at the bottom of my screen looks so much better than a boring task bar :).

    Thanks for all the help,

    Craig

  18. 18 Vincent 12 December 2007 at 6:23 pm

    Well, admittedly, it didn’t really run that glitchy with me, it was just unpractical - took up too much space and autohide was annoying. Furthermore, I found it hard to recognise my individual windows - I guess I’m just used more to text.

    Anyway, as for alternatives, I haven’t really investigated it. I believe there were Cairo Dock and probably some Gdesklets.

  19. 19 Craig 12 December 2007 at 8:07 pm

    I find that quite a few of the plugins don’t work properly, such as the gmail one, just shows a white line where the icon should be. Also when opening a new window often some of the icons corrupt, only to fix itself 10 seconds or so later.

    Craig

  20. 20 Vincent 12 December 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Ah, yes, now that you mention it - I experienced that too. I suppose the plugins you see in the screenshot are mainly those that did work, but there were a few other ones I’d have liked to use but didn’t work. Ah well…

  21. 21 Ransom 12 December 2007 at 11:36 pm

    Good guide, I would add the following line for nvidia users to your instructions

    sudo nvidia-xconfig –add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24

    I needed this before it would accelerate using my video card

  22. 22 Vincent 13 December 2007 at 10:49 am

    Ransom, I would add it but I want to know exactly what it does and why you needed to do that before I recommend it to my readers (wow, that sounds good ;) ). So, could you tell me what it does and why you need to do it? Thanks in advance.

  23. 23 Blaine 13 December 2007 at 12:25 pm

    Where did you get the mac os leopard look alike dock? Is that part of Compiz?

    thanks in advance

  24. 24 Vincent 13 December 2007 at 12:28 pm

    That’s Avant Window Navigator (see Craig’s comment and the replies to it). You can run it if you run Compiz, it is available through Synaptic.

  25. 25 Ransom 13 December 2007 at 3:46 pm

    Basically what it does is add the line

    Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”

    to you xorg.conf. I found this command on the other guide that you linked to. Also, in the comment, the dashdash got converted to a long dash. And the -d 24 argument isn’t really necessary.

    Ransom

  26. 26 Vincent 13 December 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Thanks Ransom, I’m adding it in a sec. :)

  27. 27 yvan 14 December 2007 at 10:02 am

    Hello,

    Thank you very much for this tutorial.
    Just have two little problems, firefox and thunderbird are just two big black windows. Firefox when run in safe mode is ok. Do you know how to make these two visible?
    Thanks

  28. 28 yvan 14 December 2007 at 10:18 am

    indeed several others applications are just all black. Geany, gedit, evince….

  29. 29 Vincent 14 December 2007 at 12:45 pm

    yvan, it’s the notorious Black Window Bug. Seems that a newer Nvidia driver would be able to fix this a little bit (as in: make it happen less frequently) but that still wouldn’t help you get rid of it.
    I experience the problem myself, too, though not that often. I can make the contents of the window visible again by resizing it (sometimes I have to try multiple times to find the right size) but it’s far from ideal.

  30. 30 marianne 15 December 2007 at 4:38 pm

    Hi,

    Thanks for the great instructions — works fine for me on Xubuntu Gutsy.

    However, one problem: using Compiz, new windows sometimes open below the current one (not all the time, but I haven’t figured out the pattern). Does anyone know how to fix this? i.e., new windows should always open on top.

    Most annoying is that this happens for the Xfce panel timer applet — the “Beep! Time’s up” alert window appears below all other windows (it used to open nicely on top under xfwm4).

  31. 31 Vincent 16 December 2007 at 11:48 am

    marianne, I had the same problem but I’ve found a solution. In Applications->Settings->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings, you click General Options, then you open the tab Focus & Raise Behaviour where you see the value for Focus Prevention Windows set to any. Empty that field to make sure all windows can get on top when created.

  32. 32 marianne 17 December 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Vincent — Great, thanks! Problem solved.

  33. 33 yvan 18 December 2007 at 12:11 am

    Hello,

    Thanks for the hint but I gave up! For me it’s either the black or the white window bug.
    Thanks anyway for the help
    Cheers,
    yvan

  34. 34 Ransom 19 December 2007 at 6:08 pm

    Two more things that helped me that might be nvidia specific

    I had better luck / performance running compiz as follows (I had sabayon running on a different partition which used this command so I’m not sure exactly what the options do)

    compiz –replace –sm-disable –ignore-desktop-hints ccp

    Also, compiz leaked memory horribly until I updated to the nvidia beta driver (169 something). After switching it seems to have stabalized to 140 resident megs of memory.

    Finally, I suggest everyone try shift switcher, it’s the one thing in compiz that actually has made me more productive.

  35. 35 bartek 28 December 2007 at 10:47 am

    Very nice How To.

    Good work Vincent.

  36. 36 craig 30 December 2007 at 5:08 pm

    I was given an older laptop and have Xubuntu up and running, but am getting the same error as has been mentioned: XGL not found. I’ve gotten it through apt, but still get that XGL isn’t found. I’m not sure what my graphics card is, either, since it’s a hand-me-down.
    Also, whenever I open a new window it’s slightly above the screen, so I can’t move it around. Thanks for the tutorial, btw.

  37. 37 Vincent 31 December 2007 at 3:04 pm

    craig, the only thing I can advise is to double-check whether you really have xserver-xgl installed. As for the weird placement of new windows: when you press Alt and then click a window you can drag it around. I suppose if you close the window in the right position then it will open in that same position next time.

  38. 38 hecatae 22 January 2008 at 7:51 pm

    really dont know what I’m doing wrong.

    compiz refuses to acknowledge I’ve saved my settings, I reboot and lose headers and titles and the window spaces drops down to 1 not 4.

    given up for the time being and gone back to xfwm4 which is lovely and snappy.

  39. 39 swiftfox 23 January 2008 at 12:09 am

    Thanx for the great howto! But in fact I have exactly the same problem as Hecatae. If I start compiz in a terminal it works fine again, just doesn’t start automaticly. Weird …

  40. 40 swiftfox 23 January 2008 at 12:18 am

    Sorry, forgot to mention that I use the “The more-difficult-but-better way” … I guess it’s not that unimportant :-D

  41. 41 potatofield 27 January 2008 at 10:01 pm

    i also have the same problem as hecatae. i can’t move the windows and there is only one desktop.

    but how can i get it back to how it was? xfwm4 insted of compiz?

  42. 42 Vincent 27 January 2008 at 10:10 pm

    @hecatae, swiftfox & potatofield - sorry, I really have no idea what the problem is and why, so all of a sudden, so many people experience this problem. I can only guess that this is a bug with the Compiz package in Ubuntu and can only suggest that you report a bug (perhaps it’s even already been reported) - there are a lot of knowledgeable people there that might be able to help you.

    However, I don’t get why I do not experience this problem myself (I also used the more-difficult-but-better way).

    Good luck with solving the problem,

    Vincent

  43. 43 potatofield 27 January 2008 at 10:39 pm

    ok thank you.. but it look like @hecatae had a way to go back to xfwm4. how can i do that?

  44. 44 Vincent 27 January 2008 at 10:48 pm

    @potatofield - that depends on the method you used. If you used the easy-but-inefficient way you can simply uncheck the checkbox before Compiz Fusion in Applications->Settings->Autostarted Applications. If you used the more-difficult-but-better way you have to open that configuration file again (gksudo "mousepad /etc/xdg/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc") and replace

    Client0_Command=compiz

    …with:

    Client0_Command=xfwm4

  45. 45 potatofield 27 January 2008 at 10:53 pm

    i dint di neigther of them, thats whats so wierd. i just did this: “press Alt+F2, enter compiz –replace”. i have rebooted my computer, but it did’nt help.

  46. 46 potatofield 27 January 2008 at 11:00 pm

    sorry a litttle bad whriting. but i have not done anything to make it default.. so i don’t understand whats happening. thanks for the help anyways :)

  47. 47 Vincent 27 January 2008 at 11:11 pm

    @potatofield - ah, I see what’s happening. You probably have checked “Save session for future logins” when logging out, don’t you?

    If you do, you can delete the sessions and start with a clean one (this means that, next time you log in, your applications won’t be started automatically anymore).

    In order to clear your sessions, open Applications->Accessories->Thunar File Manager, press Ctrl+L and enter the location ~/.cache/. In there, delete the sessions folder, then logout and log back in again. That should do the trick :)

    If it doesn’t work, be sure to check back here in a day or two because it’s late here in The Netherlands and I’m off to bed ;)

  48. 48 Triscal 28 January 2008 at 6:30 am

    I have it all installed and I cannot find anything I did wrong

    but any time I type in compiz --replace all the title bars and edges disapear so i can’t move it or select another application. so I turn it back to xfwm4 and it runs and everything returns what am I doing wrong

    I am using emerald and anytime I type in compiz --replace in a terminal I get this

    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    Detected PCI ID for VGA: 00:02.0 0300: 8086:2592 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
    Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
    Checking for non power of two support: present.
    Checking for Composite extension: present.
    Comparing resolution (1280×800) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
    Checking for nVidia: not present.
    Checking for FBConfig: present.
    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    Starting emerald

    (emerald:8539): Wnck-WARNING **: Property _NET_WM_NAME contained invalid UTF-8

    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No GLXFBConfig for default depth, this isn’t going to work.
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0
    exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found

    if you could help in any way I would really appreciate it I want compiz working

  49. 49 potatofield 28 January 2008 at 11:56 am

    In order to clear your sessions, open Applications->Accessories->Thunar File Manager, press Ctrl+L and enter the location ~/.cache/. In there, delete the sessions folder, then logout and log back in again. That should do the trick

    i can’t wirte “~” wheni run linux on my pc, and it doenst work to copy and paste. isd there a other way to get to the sessions folder?

  50. 50 potatofield 28 January 2008 at 2:48 pm

    ok.. here is my problem /( i think) I have messed up the xfwm4. i can’t minimize, or move any of my windows, and i saved the session so that it was the same after i restarted my computer. so i need a way to delete my sessions. i can’t do it this way:

    In order to clear your sessions, open Applications->Accessories->Thunar File Manager, press Ctrl+L and enter the location ~/.cache/. In there, delete the sessions folder, then logout and log back in again. That should do the trick

    beacuse i’m unable to whrite “~” on my computer and i can’t copy from firefox and paste in the file manager.

    so what i need is another way to delete my previos sessions..

    anyone?

  51. 51 Vincent 28 January 2008 at 3:52 pm

    @potatofield - the ~ points to your home directory. Alternatively, you can also write /home/potatofield/.cache/ (that is assuming your username is potatofield, if not, replace it with your actual username).

    @Triscal - the Compiz community is probably able to help you better than I am, but what happens if you type emerald --replace after you started Compiz?

  52. 52 Triscal 28 January 2008 at 4:16 pm

    I reboot the computer a few times and did emerald –replace and now it is working perfectly thank you so much

  53. 53 potatofield 28 January 2008 at 7:15 pm

    well now it all fine again :) thank you :D i’ll try to get compiz some other time..

  54. 54 hecatae 28 January 2008 at 7:23 pm

    Might try again, just done a fresh install of 6.06 yesterday and dist-upgrade all the way to 7.10.

    System is far faster than a fresh install of 7.10, seems tweaked to my system.

  55. 55 Swiftfox 31 January 2008 at 2:25 am

    Thank you, Vincent, for helping! I’m a bit busy these days and late with the thanx … and even more with trying things out :-D

  56. 56 newby_l 1 February 2008 at 9:48 pm

    xbuntu version?

  57. 57 Vincent 2 February 2008 at 11:48 am

    @newby_l: as I mention right at the beginning of the article:

    With the release of Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

    Also, I always tag my posts with the version of Xubuntu it applies to.

  58. 58 Eddie W 7 February 2008 at 4:45 am

    Thanks for the article. I’m having an issue getting this to work, however. I have installed the xgl server, but get this response in my terminal:
    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    No whitelisted driver found
    aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity
    no /usr/bin/metacity found, exiting

    I know that this should work because it was working when I had Ubuntu installed on my laptop (Ubuntu ran too slow so I switched to Xubuntu). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  59. 59 Eddie W 7 February 2008 at 9:54 pm

    Wow, I thought this would be a simple question. Turns out to be quite complicated trying to get direct rendering running on my system. I’ll just post the ubuntu forum thread to keep this from being a lengthy post. Any gurus out there who want a challenge?
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=690531
    And, if you’re having problems getting this to work on a fresh Xubuntu install, you might want to check to make sure that direct rendering has been enabled.

  60. 60 joda 10 February 2008 at 3:06 pm

    hello i tried your tutorial on my eee, and installment of all packages was really good, very nice. only thing is now that when i run “compiz –replace” that windows loose their decor. i can though revert to “xwfm4″. Im not sure if i have xgl, cant see it in my system, cant search for it either (it doesnt appear).

    do you know what i can do? without me killing xubuntu. Thanks.

    PS: i run the eeexubuntu (gnome i assume). And yes im a newbie, but learning fast.

  61. 61 Vincent 10 February 2008 at 3:19 pm

    @joda - Triscal (above) had that problem too, it should be solved by entering emerald --replace in a terminal window. :)

    eeeXubuntu is Xubuntu, which uses Xfce, not GNOME ;)

  62. 62 joda 10 February 2008 at 6:59 pm

    ok. But can i revert from emerald by doing the xwfm4 again. Im curious what emerald really does.

    I just assumed it was gnome since it said gnome in the system monitors.

    thanks. i try and then post back.

  63. 63 joda 10 February 2008 at 7:00 pm

    it didnt really do anything? hmmm

  64. 64 Vincent 10 February 2008 at 7:05 pm

    Didn’t it? Hmm… When you open up a terminal window (Applications->Accessories->Terminal</code) and enter emerald --replace in there, what do you get?

    Emerald “draws” the window borders around your windows, just like xfwm4 does. You can’t run xfwm4 on top of Compiz though.

    The system monitor was written for GNOME, and thus has GNOME in the name. However, it can just as well be used in Xfce, and because it offers a lot of functionality, the Xubuntu developers decided to add it.

  65. 65 joda 10 February 2008 at 7:31 pm

    i get this in terminal-

    “(emerald:5232): Wnck-WARNING **: Property _NET_WM_NAME contained invalid UTF-8″

    Sounds kinda creepy.

  66. 66 Vincent 10 February 2008 at 10:01 pm

    It does indeed, and I’m afraid I have no idea how to solve it, sorry :(

  67. 67 joda 10 February 2008 at 10:36 pm

    ok. been toying a bit. apparently i lacked xgl. i have that now, and the error from before is gone. though now when i do compiz –replace, compiz engages. after that i do emerald, it does not engage.

    i tried rebooting doing compiz again. and i got this “/usr/bin/compiz.real (video) - Warn: No 8 bit GLX pixmap format, disabling YV12 image format”

  68. 68 Vincent 10 February 2008 at 10:52 pm

    joda, a quick search on the internet returns a few results suggesting traces of previous installations may be the troublemakers. Have you tried to install Compiz or Beryl before?

  69. 69 joda 10 February 2008 at 11:22 pm

    No. but i would like to believe my constant attempts of replacing this and that, could have made it seem like that. Anyhow, got it to work a brief moment now, but everywhere i clicked in the advanced desktop settings was off all the time. Also i suddenly got a crooked line thru my screen on fast moves (bottom left to top right). As it seemed that brief moment (which i cannot provoke back again) wasnt really worth it. A shame, really wanted the wall desktop and the scaling windows (basically it).

  70. 70 joda 11 February 2008 at 8:47 pm

    YEAHIIII… it works now. And it kicks ass.

  71. 71 Vincent 11 February 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Yay! Very happy to hear that - what have you done to make it work?

  72. 72 David 12 February 2008 at 12:00 pm

    Hi, to make compiz the default I used the xfce4-session method (the more-dififcult-but-better way), and it works fine as long as I don’t save the session at logout (i.e. the tickbox in the shutdown prompt).

    If I save session at logout, next time that I start my system, compiz will not start, and fcwm4 won’t start either; the result is that there is no window frames or title.

    Has this hapenend to any of you? does compiz fail to start if you save session? I’d like to confirm that it’s not only me. (I use Xubuntu 7.10)

    I think there is another method to make compiz default (not using xfce-session), I can’t find it again, if anyone knows the link I’d appreciate it.

    thanks

  73. 73 Vincent 12 February 2008 at 3:44 pm

    David, now that you mention it - my sister has this issue, and she does save her session on logout. I just had never realized that to be the cause. Unfortunately, I do not know of a solution, but I set her window manager to Xfwm4 so she still has the effects, just without the transparent window borders.

  74. 74 crewe 15 February 2008 at 11:20 am

    I’ve installed all that I’ve needed, including XGL and reinstalled my nvidia driver and updated the xorg.conf file. But regardless of all of this I still get no window decorations.

    I’ve started a new session, checked out my xfwm-session.rc, nothing is in my auto-started apps, but when I do log in I initially get no decorations, and I’m always having to run xfwm4 –replace

    I’ve read many walkthroughs yours being the best by far, but I’m thinking it might be my dual monitor setup that’s causing it not to work…

    here’s what I get at the terminal:

    compiz –replace
    Checking for Xgl: present.
    Checking for nVidia: not present.
    Checking for Xgl: present.
    Starting emerald

    (emerald:14169): Wnck-WARNING **: Property _NET_WM_NAME contained invalid UTF-8

    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Could not acquire compositing manager selection on screen 0 display “:1.0″
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :1.0
    exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found

  75. 75 Vincent 15 February 2008 at 3:23 pm

    crewe, judging by your terminal output it is indeed a problem with your dual-monitor setup, unfortunately, not having such a setup myself, I have no idea how to help you.

  76. 76 crewe 15 February 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Alright, I’ll see what I can find on the forums, if I can somehow get this to work, I’ll be one of the few with dual screen and compiz.

  77. 77 Vincent 15 February 2008 at 8:59 pm

    If you do find a solution, be sure to leave another comment so I can add it to the troubleshooting section. It might help other people too :)

  78. 78 zymjh 16 February 2008 at 8:08 am

    I too am having the same problem, I have however been working on this dual monitor and compiz problem for quite some time. If you do find a solution let us know. I could use the help.

  79. 79 crewe 18 February 2008 at 9:14 am

    @zymjh are you using an nvidia or ati card? and is it PCIE?

  80. 80 crewe 18 February 2008 at 9:21 am

    I actually forgot to mention something on the last post but I can’t exactly delete it :P but I’ve been messing around with my xorg.conf file, and I’ve also tried installing nvidia-glx-new to see what might come of it but now, I can’t get into my account without the sever crashing as it were.

    The login screen is fine, I log in, on any account btw, and I get the default desktop background for say… 10 second, and then I’m booted back out to the login screen, any clues? I’ve already removed the saved session files.

  81. 81 crewe 21 February 2008 at 11:30 pm

    I GOT IT!
    added some lines to my xorg.conf and it’s working now, though it needs a little work to get started. but I managed to do it.
    here’s the thread
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=703511

  82. 82 Vincent 21 February 2008 at 11:36 pm

    crewe, that’s awesome, congratulations! What exactly is the solution in that thread? I’m off to bed now, but I’ll be sure to add it to the post tomorrow (Dutch time) :)

  83. 83 crewe 22 February 2008 at 12:40 am

    A run down of what I did was first

    installed all the apps I needed:

    sudo apt-get install compiz-core compiz-plugins compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald compizconfig-settings-manager

    I removed nvidia-glx / nvidia-glx-new as they directly conflicted with my nvidia drivers, and put me into “Low Graphics Mode” and caused all sorts of issues with the xserver.

    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx –purge
    sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx-new –purge

    respectively.

    restarted the computer (this is key)

    then made sure I had a fully functioning xorg.conf that I created from mish-mashing the generated
    configs from the following commands:

    sudo nvidia-xconfig
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
    nvidia-settings

    and everything was working graphically, and I was using the restricted drivers, with nothing was crashing.

    Then I added these entries to my xorg.conf

    Section “Extensions”
    Option “Composite” “Enable”
    EndSection

    and

    Option “AddARGBVisuals” “True”

    to the Device section

    I then reinstalled the nvidia drivers

    sudo nvidia-installer -f

    -f forces the install, when the install asks you if you want it to generate and xorg for you SAY NO! (You just spent a lot of time creating a working one)

    then restarted the computer again.

    it’s still a bit finicky as I had to run it twice to get it to work, and afterwards I can’t switch back to xfwm4 but it’s I small price to pay.

  84. 84 crewe 22 February 2008 at 12:46 am

    OH! almost slipped my mind I had to install metacity as well, I ran
    compiz –replace in the terminal and it said that it was looking for it, so I installed it after removing the nvidia-glx

  85. 85 Vincent 22 February 2008 at 11:17 am

    Thanks, crewe, I added it :)
    Too bad you had to install Metacity, though…

  86. 86 crewe 24 February 2008 at 3:16 pm

    UPDATE: I’ve since uninstalled metacity, and everything seems to be working great

  87. 87 John Shewsbury 25 February 2008 at 12:01 pm

    Can this be done on the low spec laptop like Eee-PC ?

    Do you think the Eee-PC (with the basic Celeron 900/ 512MB RAM) can afford this ?

    Thanks…

  88. 88 Vincent 25 February 2008 at 12:09 pm

    John, it has been done on the EeePC, so I’d say: go for it! :) I’m running a 512 MB+AMD Athlon XP 2200+ system myself and it works fine.
    (Reading through that page, you do seem to need to install libgl1-mesa-dri in advance, which you can just do through Synaptic)

  89. 89 ldp 27 February 2008 at 9:07 pm

    It works for me on Kubuntu without XGL, but not in Xubuntu.
    When I run compiz –replace, The window pane dissapears and the desktop becomes inactive. The only way for me to restore it is by runnig xfwm 4 &

    I have an intel card

  90. 90 Ace 29 February 2008 at 7:11 am

    I am having the exact same problem as the above poster is having

  91. 91 Stephen 5 March 2008 at 1:23 am

    I have the same problem the last 2 people above me had.. with an intel card.. when i run “compiz –replace” (i even tried it in the console), it removes the windows borders and I have to type xfwm4 to get back control.. It says I dont have XGL installed, but i installed xserver-xgl package.. it’s there. here’s what it outputs in the terminal when i try the compiz –replace:

    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    Detected PCI ID for VGA: 00:02.0 0300: 8086:2772 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
    Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
    Trying again with indirect rendering:
    Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
    Checking for non power of two support: present.
    Checking for Composite extension: present.
    Comparing resolution (1280×1024) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
    Checking for nVidia: not present.
    Checking for FBConfig: present.
    Checking for Xgl: not present.
    Starting emerald

    (emerald:6684): Wnck-WARNING **: Property _NET_WM_NAME contained invalid UTF-8

    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No GLXFBConfig for default depth, this isn’t going to work.
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0
    exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found

  92. 92 Vincent 5 March 2008 at 8:51 am

    @ldp, Ace and Stephen - I’m sorry, I’m really frustrated that I can’t help… What I would recommend is to report a bug on Launchpad (and link to it here). If it’s a bug it might get fixed, if not people there might be able to help you.

  93. 93 bra333 5 March 2008 at 9:56 am

    I decided to try xubuntu and compiz, installed xubuntu, installed compiz, installed nvidia-glx, replaced xfwm4 with compiz, used the sudo nvidia-xconfig –add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24 and restarted the pc….
    starts compis fizion, but I do not get cube (I get 2 sided flat spin), window border disapeared(emerald or emerald –replace - nothing happens), try to start terminal I got white screen, when I try to shutdown pc it takes time (3/4 minutes) untill I can see shutdown option.
    other thing I miss in this compiz fusion is the plugin rise above window, I have it on my other pc but it is puppy distro. How can I add extra plugins for compiz?

    any idea how to fix all these problems

    thanks in advance

  94. 94 Vincent 5 March 2008 at 3:30 pm

    bra333, you can configure a lot with CompizConfig, and I could make a very long comment explaining how to. You can certainly use it to enable “the Cube” - see also its wiki page for help on enabling all the plugins you like.

    As for your other problems - I’m sorry, they appear to be bugs (have you installed emerald?) with which I’m not sure I can help you :(

  95. 95 bra333 5 March 2008 at 7:03 pm

    emerald is downloaded, the cube is enabled but I have only 1 flat spinning desktop not a cube, I have another desktop pc with wNOP and I know how to use compiz and all the plugins and keybindings.
    thanks for the try,
    I will give I try with tux repositary and get compiz from there…

  96. 96 Vincent 5 March 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Ah, then you have to set the “Horizontal Virtual Size” (or something like that - I’m not at a computer using Compiz atm) in General Options->Desktop Size in the Cube settings.

    If you mean the Trevino repository then I wouldn’t recommend that as the official repository is bound to be far more stable. Plus, pulling Compiz from another source isn’t going to change your personal settings.

  97. 97 nicholas 7 March 2008 at 3:51 am

    nchung66@nchung66-laptop:~$ compiz –replace
    Checking for Xgl: present.
    Checking for nVidia: not present.
    Checking for Xgl: present.
    Starting emerald
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Could not acquire compositing manager selection on screen 0 display “:1.0″
    /usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :1.0
    exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found

    how do i install nvidia?

    also everytime i scroll and stuff it lags… what do i do?

  98. 98 Vincent 7 March 2008 at 8:51 am

    nicholas, that means that you might have to install the official driver for your graphics card. While this will make your desktop experience much smoother, be aware that this driver is not open source. If you don’t mind, open Applications->System->Restricted Drivers Manager and check the checkbox next to the driver for your card (probably from nVidia). It will then download and install it, and activate it after you have rebooted your computer.

    Best of luck :)

  99. 99 nicholas 7 March 2008 at 9:43 am

    hey, i tried that and the only drivers i see are software modem driver and firmware for broadcom 43xx, both of which were already enabled…

    does this mean my computer doesnt recognize my video card? i think its an integrated video card…

  100. 100 Vincent 7 March 2008 at 9:49 am

    Hmm… If you have an integrated video card, then I think it might be that your card does not support hardware acceleration, which Compiz depends on. Sorry :(

    If you do want fancy desktop effects, what you might try is enabling Xfce’s native effects through Applications->Settings->Window Manager Tweaks, below the Compositing tab. While it doesn’t all of the effects Compiz has to offer, it can add a very nice touch to your desktop. Note that, if your video card does not support hardware acceleration, this might result in a performance drop, but if that’s the case, you can always turn it off again :)

  101. 101 nicholas 7 March 2008 at 9:57 am

    hey, how do i check if my gateway 6020gz supports hardware acceleration? and if it does, how do i enable it?

    well, thanks so much for the help! the truth hurts sometimes

  102. 102 Vincent 7 March 2008 at 10:03 am

    I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know how to check whether it supports it. If it does, then apparently it isn’t recognised and thus would probably be a lot of trouble to enable.

    And yes, the truth sucks now and then. Hate to be the messenger :(

  103. 103 bra333 7 March 2008 at 6:42 pm

    Thanks Vincent, it was really horizontal virtual size setting …
    other thing I miss is rise above desktop plugin bur will see ….any idea how to add it …. here is a video on my other compiz and as can see the windows are avove the desktop….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMwNFytakiI
    I will appreciate if you know how to fix that also

    cheers

  104. 104 Vincent 7 March 2008 at 8:39 pm

    You can have the windows be lifted of the desktop when rotating the cube by checking Raise on rotate under Rotate Cube. :)

  105. 105 Ace 10 March 2008 at 6:49 am

    Hi.I have enabled compositing and now the program windows are sluggish when dragged around.I have onboard intel graphics with 64 mb.Is that the problem?.Will upgrading to a powerful card make compositing smoother?.What graphics card would you recommend?

  106. 106 Vincent 10 March 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Yep, that definitely sounds like an underpowered graphics card. Unfortunately, that’s about all I can say about it, as I’m really not into hardware. Intel is supposed to work good with open source and ATI has been making strides recently with publishing open source drivers. nVidia has always supported Linux, but with closed source drivers.
    Still, I recommend you to ask it over at the Ubuntu Forums, as I’m sure there will be plenty of people there to help you. In fact, it has probably already been asked a gazillion times, so a quick search should bring it up :)

  107. 107 Ace 13 March 2008 at 1:08 pm

    Thanks for reply.I will buy a more powerful graphics card.So that the compositing will be trouble free right?.Or is the sluggish performance related to something else?

  108. 108 Vincent 13 March 2008 at 5:58 pm

    Ace, I think it is, but you should really ask a hardware guru, as I’m definitely not qualified to be giving you advice on buying hardware. I’d recommend the Ubuntu forums as a place to ask.

  109. 109 eviirthaang 24 March 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Hi Vincent,

    I am curious how you got Compiz/Compiz-Fusion to run with xfwm4 as the decorator… I tried and failed. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MurrinaStormCloud and the xfce-4.5-svn xfwm4 decorator theme, but I would like to run it with Compiz.

    Any thoughts? How did you get it to work on your sister’s laptop?

    Best,
    eviirthaang.

  110. 110 Vincent 24 March 2008 at 2:50 pm

    Well, eviirthaang, I didn’t really do that quite consciously. In the Compiz settings manager, I set xfwm4 as the fallback window manager. Now she did something which prevented Emerald from running in her account (which I coincidentally fixed this morning), and I guess that’s what made Compiz run xfwm4.
    If you also want to run xfwm4, what you *could* do is uninstall Emerald after you set xfwm4 as the fallback window manager. Emerald should then not be able to run and xfwm4 should be ran instead.
    Good luck,

    Vincent

  111. 111 StAR 6 April 2008 at 8:44 pm

    I set it up om my Eee pc that has eeexubuntu, and it killed my multi desktop, and it also took out all the tool bars, I got them from the Synaptic Package Manager and then hit the alt+f2 and put in the compiz –replace that is when it bugged up. I know it can be done on the eeepc one of my friends has one with them all set up. Please help me fix this I like having the four desktops rather then just the one.

  112. 112 Vincent 6 April 2008 at 8:50 pm

    StAR, I’ve just added the following to the post:

    If you are left with just one desktop, you have to set the “Horizontal Virtual Size” in General Options->Desktop Size in the Cube settings.

    What exactly do you mean by the tool bars? If you mean the panels at the top and bottom of your screen, try pressing Alt+F2 and running xfce4-panel.

  113. 113 StAR 6 April 2008 at 10:50 pm

    how do I go about disabling the whole thing?

  114. 114