Getting Compiz to work

[vdeane]

I feel like an idiot, but how do you get compiz to work? I saw compiz in the updates recently so I decided to try to install the plugins and the settings manager to get back the wobbly windows. Unfortunately I managed to bork my session pretty bad (it got to the point where even Chrome wasn't working properly any more, and even though I managed to get marco back from another tty after much googling on another computer, it's still not acting normally) when I tried to enable window decorations because it seems that Mint 17 MATE doesn't come with gtk-window-decorator and I don't know what the default MATE decorator is. Can anyone enlighten me? I don't want to have to switch to a different decorator that might not allow me to keep using my theme as I've configured it.

[richyrich]

This may shed some light for you . . Ubuntu 14.04 = Mint 17 and 17.1
http://www.webupd8.org/2014/11/how-to-u ... -1404.html
good luck,
richy

[vdeane]

It doesn't mention what the command in the window decorator plugin needs to be set to. Just checking it and running compiz --replace & gives me this error:

/bin/sh: 1: /usr/bin/gtk-window-decorator: not found

That's how I borked everything in the first place. Because there was no window decorator, everything started failing one by one until I couldn't even click on links in Chrome.

[Hoser Rob]

I can't give you any specific advice on using compiz in mate, and what I'm about to say may be not what you're wanting to hear, but ...

I'm using mint 17 cinnamon on my i3/intel integrated gma laptop and mint 17 mate on this atom/cedarview gma netbook. There's no way I'd install cinnamon on the netbook. The gma doesn't have proper 3D hardware acceleration and, since cinnamon is compiz based, the cpu usage is almost 50% with no app software running.

Mate is a nice, reasonably light and fast DE. Compared to other light/lightish DEs I've tried it's a bit plain but it's well sorted. It doesn't use fancy compositing or eye candy. That is largely why it's reasonably light and fast.

Installing compiz on a DE like mate or xfce means it's not a light DE anymore. Why not just try cinnamon?

Bottom line for me, if you want the eye candy try cinnamon. It runs quite fast if you have proper 3D hardware accelerated video ... if you don't forget it ... and frankly I think it's better than mate.

If you do decide to try cinnamon do not go the route suggested on all those crappy linux blogs and just install cinnamon-desktop. I've had multiple DEs installed before but not anymore. It's a good way to make your linux system unstable.

[vdeane]

I've never had issues with compiz on machines before (except one desktop that would have been nearly 10 years old if I didn't recycle it a few months ago), at least not with just the wobbly windows, but I have had a TON of issues with cinnamon, largely because it's a fork of Gnome 3 and therefore built on CSS and JavaScript (both interpreted languages that should NEVER be used in anything even remotely resembling a desktop manager), which slows it down immensely. Gnome 3 doesn't even offer a graphical environment that's significantly heavier than what I have now (and Linux doesn't even have anything close to Windows 7 Aero, which runs well on anything that's current) and it can still drive any system short of a gaming machine to its knees.

Unfortunately I have never managed to have a properly functioning video card in Linux. The proprietary driver from ATI was discontinued before I even bought the Newegg combo bundle because for some reason ATI only supports the latest and greatest bleeding edge card in Linux, and I won't downgrade X to run an old driver because I had a ton of software crashes the last time I did that.

Anyways, I gave up on this. Guess I'll have to wait for the next LTS to see if anything's improved.

[yaye]

I've never had issues with compiz on machines before (except one desktop that would have been nearly 10 years old if I didn't recycle it a few months ago), at least not with just the wobbly windows, but I have had a TON of issues with cinnamon, largely because it's a fork of Gnome 3 and therefore built on CSS and JavaScript (both interpreted languages that should NEVER be used in anything even remotely resembling a desktop manager), which slows it down immensely. Gnome 3 doesn't even offer a graphical environment that's significantly heavier than what I have now (and Linux doesn't even have anything close to Windows 7 Aero, which runs well on anything that's current) and it can still drive any system short of a gaming machine to its knees.

Unfortunately I have never managed to have a properly functioning video card in Linux. The proprietary driver from ATI was discontinued before I even bought the Newegg combo bundle because for some reason ATI only supports the latest and greatest bleeding edge card in Linux, and I won't downgrade X to run an old driver because I had a ton of software crashes the last time I did that.

Anyways, I gave up on this. Guess I'll have to wait for the next LTS to see if anything's improved.

Does that include Nvidia cards? I've used Nvidia cards with many versions of Linux and haven't had any problems in years. Although I'm a supporter of AMD processors, I avoid using their ATI cards with Linux because their cards don't work as well in Linux systems as Nvidia cards.

[vdeane]

Does that include Nvidia cards?

I wouldn't know; never had a Nvidia card. I would have preferred to avoid ATI with this computer, but I was on a budget, and since I don't know much about hardware, reliant on Newegg combo bundles.

[yaye]

Unless ATI significantly improves their support of their graphics cards in Linux, I'll continue using Nvidia cards in all the systems I build or upgrade.

[Hoser Rob]

I've never had issues with compiz on machines before (except one desktop that would have been nearly 10 years old if I didn't recycle it a few months ago), at least not with just the wobbly windows, but I have had a TON of issues with cinnamon, largely because it's a fork of Gnome 3 and therefore built on CSS and JavaScript (both interpreted languages that should NEVER be used in anything even remotely resembling a desktop manager), which slows it down immensely. Gnome 3 doesn't even offer a graphical environment that's significantly heavier than what I have now (and Linux doesn't even have anything close to Windows 7 Aero, which runs well on anything that's current) and it can still drive any system short of a gaming machine to its knees...

I used to agree with this. I never thought I'd like a gnome 3 based DE. When I installed mint 17 cinnamon I was actually going to install Mint 17 KDE, but I figured I should try the cinnamon live CD on USB since I hadn't ever tried cinnamon before. It's actually faster than MATE, assuming decent 3D accel.

I use Mate on my 1Gb netbook which does not have good 3D accel. If Lubuntu 14.04 wasn't such a sorry bug fest I'd be using that. I really don't see the point of putting compiz/various eye candy on light DEs. You can't have it both ways.