Comments on: Compiz-Fusion in Kubuntu, Not Just Eye-Candy Baby!

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:55:27 +0000

I spent a few hours this weekend tinkering with it - I finally got it all installed and working but was still running into some odd issues. The biggest problem I had was like you - what do you call feature X and how do I enable/use it (or disable it)…

I’d love to see sometime in the future - the usability aspects split off from the effects. I have no desire to paint my screen with fire. Ever. But the expose and other screen switching things were neat and I could see myself using some of those when it gets a bit more stable.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:29:38 +0000

I think the problem is the command used to start compiz. With my ATI card, “compiz –replace &” won’t work for autostart. I think the commands you have to use are as follows (though I can only personally vouch for the ATI one):

ATI
LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz –replace –indirect-rendering –sm-disable ccp &

Nvidia
compiz –replace –indirect-rendering –sm-disable ccp &

Intel
INTEL_BATCH=1 LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 compiz –replace –indirect-rendering –force-aiglx –sm-disable ccp &

Also, “export KDEWM=startcompiz” will only work if ’startcompiz’ is in /usr/bin, and executable. Otherwise, you must include the full path to the startcompiz script.

By: Freedom

Freedom — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:48:51 +0000

Well, I tried this “export KDEWM=startcompiz” to ~/.bashrc. thing and it won’t work.
KDE loads like before with kwin and KDE decorations even tough echo $KDEWM returns startcompiz. Maybe something else should be adjusted…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 04:31:54 +0000

A couple of tips using Compiz Fusion with KDE (sorry if someone else has mentioned these, I haven’t had time to read the comments).

1 - “Katapult is ‘wonky’”. Do you mean that katapult has that weird shadow under it? If so, you can disable that by adding “-name=katapult” to the shadow windows dialog in the Window decorations preferences. Also, Compiz sets Alt + Space to Window Menu, so disable that under General Options/Actions.

2 - It’s possible to load Compiz automatically by creating a script (called say, startcompiz) and adding the line “export KDEWM=startcompiz” to ~/.bashrc. This means that kwin won’t be loaded, saving resources and loading your desktop faster (’Course, if Compiz isn’t stable for you, this might not be desirable).

By: manchicken

manchicken — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:28:53 +0000

xSacha: “Works for me” is only a good line for bug reports. In the real world if someone is having a problem, simply saying “works for me” does nothing constructive or helpful. I know for certain that I am not the only one having this trouble, as a couple folks came forward with similar trouble in #ubuntu-effects. I’m blogging on my experience, not on the over-all state of things.

Fyda: Thanks for the thoughtful explanation of all of that. I appreciate you helping me figure out the Alt-Button2 issue. That’s just something I really missed.

I really appreciate the feedback on this post. Thanks for reading.

By: manchicken

manchicken — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:22:00 +0000

I’m thinking that it is actually Emerald that is crashing things, and not actually compiz itself. The kde-window-decorator seems to work, but it has some problems (like the shadow layer is white sometimes) that get pretty annoying. I hope to see kde-window-manager work a bit better in the future. I’d also like to see either emerald or something that can use emerald themes. There are a lot of fantastic emerald themes out there, and I see no need to throw all of that gorgeous artwork away.

By: manchicken

manchicken — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:19:58 +0000

Okay, so I played with that for a while, and `compiz –replace -c emerald` doesn’t work. It starts up compiz, sure, but it doesn’t fire off emerald.

As far as the childish “well I guess KDE still sucks comment” goes, if you want to be an idiot please take your comments elsewhere. I had my fill of that with the Ron Paul folks.

By: manchicken

manchicken — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 14:29:47 +0000

As to the enabling compiz by default debate, I hate to say this, but please take that debate elsewhere. I don’t seriously believe that any Ubuntu team would enable something that was less than stable by default, so it’s not really a debate I’m willing to entertain here.

Tribe, I’m going to try that right now…

By: kvz

kvz — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 14:02:38 +0000

Compiz-fusion rocks my world. I’ve been using it for quite some time now, pretty stable, and damn fast.

I’ve written an article how to install compiz-fusion on Ubuntu Feisty: http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/enable_compizfusion_in_ubuntu_feisty/

By: erik

erik — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:58:47 +0000

I have never had beryl/compiz/compiz-fusion really crash. Must be just that KDE sucks as usual again