I have two installs, one is an installation of Gutsy which I've been upgrading since Dapper without a fresh install - it's on a desktop with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - and I also have an IBM ThinkPad T42 with a Radeon 9600 Mobility; I installed Kubuntu Gutsy fresh from CD on it last night.
On my desktop, I have installed four or five different compiz/beryl repositories over about a year, with varying success. But today on both the desktop and laptop, I finally got compiz to work flawlessly. I see a lot of people asking questions about compiz, so I thought I would offer some tips, especially for compiz/emerald/KDE/fglrx users.
Sorry, I'm not an expert, but I will make corrections as they're pointed out. This is basically the procedure I followed.
Using ATI/fglrx
I could only get it to work with the ATI fglrx driver (the stock one that ships with Ubuntu). To make sure it's installed and activated, click K Menu -> System Settings -> Advanced -> Restricted Drivers, and make sure that there's a green check mark and the status says "In use" for "ATI accelerated graphics driver". If you had fglrx prior to an upgrade, it should still be installed and work correctly; if you installed fresh you will need to install and activate it using the above tool.
To make sure fglrx is working correctly, you can run fglrxinfo and it should look like this:
If you don't have an ATI card, make sure you have a 3D hardware accelerated driver installed; I can't tell you which ones work best with compiz as I only have ATI cards. Also, if you have another type of card, you probably won't be using xserver-xgl - skip any references to that.
Important for previous beryl/compiz users
If you just installed a fresh Gutsy from CD/DVD, or if you upgraded to Gutsy and have never installed compiz or beryl before, just skip down to the "Installing Compiz" section.
1. Using K Menu -> System -> Adept Manager, search for "compiz", and make sure all old compiz packages have been removed - anything like compiz-settings, compiz-plugins, compiz-kde, compiz-fusion, compiz-extras, and also python-compizconfig, libdecoration0 and libcompiz*, etc. Then do the same for searches of "beryl", "emerald", "xserver-xgl".
2. If you have any old beryl or compiz repo's lying around in /etc/apt/sources.list, you'll want to remove them before continuing as they're pretty much useless at this point.
3. After you do this, be certain that all old dependencies and downloaded packages are removed by running this:
Not sure those are all necessary, but they shouldn't hurt. Now fetch updates:
If all of the above went well, you should be totally clean of previous compiz/beryl/emerald packages. In Adept Manager, search for "compiz", "emerald" and "xserver-xgl" (one at a time) and look at the various package maintainers - should all be Ubuntu MOTU folks, Michael Vogt and Travis Watkins.
4. Remove any old startxgl scripts, startcompiz scripts, or Xgl xsessions... look in /usr/share/xsessions for anything named "xgl", "beryl/compiz", etc. Then look in ~/.kde/Autostart for similarly named files.
5. Log out. Press <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> at the login prompt (to restart X) and log back in.
6. You really should wipe out any old compiz/beryl/emerald configuration data from your home directory. Try this:
And remove any relevant config files or directories you see along the way.
Installing Compiz
(NOTE: I have only tried this with ATI cards; if you have an nVidia or an Intel 3D card, you won't be using xserver-xgl... other than that, if there are other differences in the setup which I've missed, let me know and I'll update this post if you like).
First, ATI users will install compiz, ccsm, xserver-xgl, librsvg2-common and emerald:
or, if you won't be using xserver-xgl (nVidia and Intel folks)
To be certain, I have the following packages installed:
I don't know if the gnome stuff is necessary, but I have it... in case you're wondering, librsvg2-common will allow CompizConfig Settings Manager to display icons for each of the effects - aside from this, it's not essential.
(ATI Only)
Log out, make sure to kill and restart the X server (just push <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> while at login prompt) and log back in.
On my machine, KDE was sluggish and slow when I first logged in. If you don't end up getting compiz to work and plan to work on it later, you'll want to uninstall xserver-xgl and re-login to make KDE fast again. But, this went away for me after I successfully started compiz.
/(ATI Only)
Start compiz with this command:
It will start emerald for you. If you don't see any errors, compiz should be running and you should have window decorations. If it seems to be running OK, log out and log back in - this time compiz should start automatically after a short while.
Now run this:
This will let you play around with the various Compiz effects - for starters, check "Desktop Cube" and "Rotate Cube", and you should be able to hold <Ctrl><Alt> and drag the mouse, rotating the cube.
Install any other compiz packages (extra plugins, etc.) and see what they do, if you like.
I'm still having problems with the task bar and pager, but at least the task bar works enough to be usable. The pager I will live without for the moment. The task bar works fine but shows programs from all desktops, not just the one you're working in, despite the "Show windows from all desktops" checkbox in the task bar settings.
I've also noticed that system tray icons like to "float" when the session first begins; they'll appear as a standalone window instead of in the system tray. I've found just closing the app and restarting it works, or removing the system tray from the panel and replacing it. It doesn't always do it.
Finally, if emerald or compiz dies, try and restart it:
Hope this helps. Good luck!
On my desktop, I have installed four or five different compiz/beryl repositories over about a year, with varying success. But today on both the desktop and laptop, I finally got compiz to work flawlessly. I see a lot of people asking questions about compiz, so I thought I would offer some tips, especially for compiz/emerald/KDE/fglrx users.
Sorry, I'm not an expert, but I will make corrections as they're pointed out. This is basically the procedure I followed.
Using ATI/fglrx
I could only get it to work with the ATI fglrx driver (the stock one that ships with Ubuntu). To make sure it's installed and activated, click K Menu -> System Settings -> Advanced -> Restricted Drivers, and make sure that there's a green check mark and the status says "In use" for "ATI accelerated graphics driver". If you had fglrx prior to an upgrade, it should still be installed and work correctly; if you installed fresh you will need to install and activate it using the above tool.
To make sure fglrx is working correctly, you can run fglrxinfo and it should look like this:
Code:
$ fglrxinfo display: :0.0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9800 PRO OpenGL version string: 2.0.6473 (8.37.6)
Important for previous beryl/compiz users
If you just installed a fresh Gutsy from CD/DVD, or if you upgraded to Gutsy and have never installed compiz or beryl before, just skip down to the "Installing Compiz" section.
1. Using K Menu -> System -> Adept Manager, search for "compiz", and make sure all old compiz packages have been removed - anything like compiz-settings, compiz-plugins, compiz-kde, compiz-fusion, compiz-extras, and also python-compizconfig, libdecoration0 and libcompiz*, etc. Then do the same for searches of "beryl", "emerald", "xserver-xgl".
2. If you have any old beryl or compiz repo's lying around in /etc/apt/sources.list, you'll want to remove them before continuing as they're pretty much useless at this point.
3. After you do this, be certain that all old dependencies and downloaded packages are removed by running this:
Code:
$ sudo apt-get autoclean $ sudo apt-get clean $ sudo apt-get autoremove
Code:
$ sudo apt-get update
4. Remove any old startxgl scripts, startcompiz scripts, or Xgl xsessions... look in /usr/share/xsessions for anything named "xgl", "beryl/compiz", etc. Then look in ~/.kde/Autostart for similarly named files.
5. Log out. Press <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> at the login prompt (to restart X) and log back in.
6. You really should wipe out any old compiz/beryl/emerald configuration data from your home directory. Try this:
Code:
$ cd ~ $ find -name *compiz* $ find -name *emerald* $ find -name *beryl*
Installing Compiz
(NOTE: I have only tried this with ATI cards; if you have an nVidia or an Intel 3D card, you won't be using xserver-xgl... other than that, if there are other differences in the setup which I've missed, let me know and I'll update this post if you like).
First, ATI users will install compiz, ccsm, xserver-xgl, librsvg2-common and emerald:
Code:
$ sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-kde compzconfig-settings-manager emerald librsvg2-common xserver-xgl
Code:
$ sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager emerald librsvg2-common
- compiz
- compiz-core
- compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
- compiz-fusion-plugins-main
- compiz-gnome
- compiz-kde
- compiz-plugins
- compizconfig-settings-manager
- emerald
- libcompizconfig-backend-gconf
- libcompizconfig-backend-kconfig
- libdecoration0
- libemeraldengine0
- librsvg2-common
- python-compizconfig
- xserver-xgl (skip this if you have nVidia or Intel graphics)
I don't know if the gnome stuff is necessary, but I have it... in case you're wondering, librsvg2-common will allow CompizConfig Settings Manager to display icons for each of the effects - aside from this, it's not essential.
(ATI Only)
Log out, make sure to kill and restart the X server (just push <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> while at login prompt) and log back in.
On my machine, KDE was sluggish and slow when I first logged in. If you don't end up getting compiz to work and plan to work on it later, you'll want to uninstall xserver-xgl and re-login to make KDE fast again. But, this went away for me after I successfully started compiz.
/(ATI Only)
Start compiz with this command:
Code:
$ compiz --replace ccp &
Now run this:
Code:
$ ccsm
Install any other compiz packages (extra plugins, etc.) and see what they do, if you like.
I'm still having problems with the task bar and pager, but at least the task bar works enough to be usable. The pager I will live without for the moment. The task bar works fine but shows programs from all desktops, not just the one you're working in, despite the "Show windows from all desktops" checkbox in the task bar settings.
I've also noticed that system tray icons like to "float" when the session first begins; they'll appear as a standalone window instead of in the system tray. I've found just closing the app and restarting it works, or removing the system tray from the panel and replacing it. It doesn't always do it.
Finally, if emerald or compiz dies, try and restart it:
Code:
$ pkill compiz && pkill emerald && compiz --replace ccp &
that didn't work a week ago 
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