Compiz Fusion & XFCE4/Sid

[mzilikazi]

Updated:
Aug 05 2007 - latest working compiz-fusion:
Nov 22 2007 - tested for accuracy and funcitonality.
Dec 15 2007 - tested for accuracy - added fusion-icon


If you use Debian Stable this is not for you. If you want stability this is not for you.
If you already have Beryl or Compiz installed you may or may not experience issues. If you do, my suggestion is to remove any other compiz related packages, especially packages from any other repos including offical Debian.

Latest compiz-fusion ( I personally have never tried the packages available in experimental)

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$ apt-cache policy compiz-core
compiz-core:
  Installed: 1:0.5.5~git20071212+imudebian0
  Candidate: 1:0.5.5~git20071212+imudebian0
  Version table:
     1:0.6.2-0~emiscabpo+3~debian1 0
          1 http://ftp.us.debian.org ../project/experimental/main Packages
 *** 1:0.5.5~git20071212+imudebian0 0
        500 http://download.tuxfamily.org unstable/compiz-fusion-git Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.6.3~git20071104.c9009efd-1 0
        500 http://mirror.datafast.net.au unstable/main Packages
     0.5.2-2 0
        500 http://mirror.datafast.net.au testing/main Packages
     0.2.2-1 0
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org etch/main Packages

If you have not already edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf, add the following to the end of the file:

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Section "Extensions"
        Option  "Composite"     "Enable"
EndSection

Add a new repo:

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nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/osrdebian unstable compiz-fusion-git

Save & exit

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CTRL+O
CTRL+X

Add the gpg key, get updated and install compiz-fusion:

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wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/osrdebian/61B8DB62.gpg -O-|sudo apt-key add -
aptitude update
aptitude install compiz compiz-fusion-plugins-main compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-gnome emerald emerald-themes fusion-icon

You can start compiz in more than 1 way. To test it out try it like so:

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compiz --replace &

Start the Emerald themer like so:

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emerald --replace &

To have this done automatically, edit

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~/.config/autostart/Autostart.desktop

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compiz --replace &
emerald --replace &

OR instead of compiz --replace you can use:

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fusion-icon&

fusion-icon puts a nice icon in the systray for compiz-fusion. From there you can access the CCSM, change your WM, window decorator, etc.
Access the Compiz Config Settings Manager from cli :

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ccsm

Or from the XFCE4 menu:
Settings>CCSM

Emerald is a theming engine. You can download some themes for Emerald. If you intend on downloading non-GPL themes open a shell:

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svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes

Emerald themes can be configured here:
Settings>Emerald Theme Manager
Be sure that CCSM has Window Decorations enabled
CCSM>Effects>Window Decoration


My XFCE4 autostart script is:

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~/.config/autostart/Autostart.desktop

It looks like so:

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[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.9.4
Type=Application
Name=Autostart
Comment=Autostart
Exec=/home/glenn/Scripts/startup.sh
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Hidden=false

So Exec= simply points Autostart.desktop to any script of my choosing. I chose to call it startup.sh. You may call it anything you like. My startup.sh looks like this:

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#!/bin/sh
/home/glenn/Scripts/numlock_on.sh &
/home/glenn/Scripts/caplock_off.sh &
nvidia-settings -l &
/home/glenn/Scripts/jack.sh &
alltray envy24control&
fusion-icon&
exit

In startup.sh you add any command you like which could be yet another script like jack.sh (jack seems to prefer it get started by itself - go figure) or a simple command like compiz --replace&

[mzilikazi]

I've had a bit of a chance to play w/ Compiz Fusion and I must say I'm really impressed. It's much more stable than previously and w/ the latest Nvidia 100.14.11 driver (card is a GeForce 6200) a particularly annoying issue has gone away. In the past anytime I switched to a VT it was impossible to get back to Xwindows. CTRL+ALT+F7 simply did nothing. You had to restart X which was a real PITA. Well as I said this problem has gone away thankfully!

One issue that remains is the lack of interoperability w/ the XFCE4 pager. The pager just doesn't get updated so you really don't know which desktop you're on. Additionally sometimes the pager doesn't display applications that are open on any given desktop. For the time being, I removed the XFCE4 pager and use the Wall plugin of Compiz. It's an OK solution but not a final one IMHO.

I did manage somehow to set something that caused my right click button to lose functionality. I just nuked ~/.compizconfig/ and started over. No problems this time.

I left the desktop up and running today. When I get home we'll see if there are any nasty memory leaks or other issues.

If you have any experiences to post please do. Specifically your card and Nvidia driver version.

[berts]

Thank you for posting this, and many thanks to whoever is responsible for the compiz-fusion debs.

This is particularly good news for those of us who've become "attached" to the eye-candy beryl provides and were wondering what would happen to the code base after the 2 branches of the project re-joined.

Does anyone know if separate development efforts are continuing with beryl and/or compiz branches?

Regards,
Bert

[berts]

I've had a bit of a chance to play w/ Compiz Fusion and I must say I'm really impressed. It's much more stable than previously and w/ the latest Nvidia 100.14.11 driver (card is a GeForce 6200) a particularly annoying issue has gone away. In the past anytime I switched to a VT it was impossible to get back to Xwindows. CTRL+ALT+F7 simply did nothing. You had to restart X which was a real PITA. Well as I said this problem has gone away thankfully!

One issue that remains is the lack of interoperability w/ the XFCE4 pager. The pager just doesn't get updated so you really don't know which desktop you're on. Additionally sometimes the pager doesn't display applications that are open on any given desktop. For the time being, I removed the XFCE4 pager and use the Wall plugin of Compiz. It's an OK solution but not a final one IMHO.

I did manage somehow to set something that caused my right click button to lose functionality. I just nuked ~/.compizconfig/ and started over. No problems this time.

I left the desktop up and running today. When I get home we'll see if there are any nasty memory leaks or other issues.

Please do let us know how compiz-fusion works out for you.

I'm running Sid on a Dell XPS-410 with an E6600 DuoCore 2.66.GHz, 2 GiB RAM, an NVIDIA 7950 GS, and 2 X 300 GiB non-RAID SATA hdd. The Debian install is on the second of those disks. Beryl seems fine with the NVIDIA drivers installed via the script from their site. At present, this is a pretty much "crash & burn" dev install, so I'm not adverse to experimentation. None the less, I have put a bit of work into it, so I'd be interested to hear more about your experiences before taking the plunge.

Just off the top of my head, I can see a possible conflict between the "emerald" decorator I have installed from http://debian.beryl-project.org and the same package from the repository you offer. Hence, my reluctance to just dive right in

Regards,
Bert

[berts]

OK, I couldn't resist. Once I'd assured myself that I could remove and re-install the beryl stuff without significant problems, I took the plunge and tried compiz-fusion.

NICE!! Very nice indeed! ' Course it'll take some time to be sure it's stable enough for every day use, but so far, so good...

Regards,
Bert

[mzilikazi]

Course it'll take some time to be sure it's stable enough for every day use, but so far, so good...

Regards,
Bert

Well in the past 2 days there have been some updates. I can't find any show stoppers. The pager misbehaving thing is still present but I've had no crashes nor any (noticible) memory leaks. I haven't quite gotten all of the window to behave exactly as I'm like but there may be a knob to turn somewhere just yet. There are plenty of them!

[b9anders]

It feels a bit unstable to me and there are some beryl features missing I'd like back, but overall, it seems good. Love the new features.

[trey]

i wish they had up-to-date amd64 packages, come on, it's 2007.

[mzilikazi]

It feels a bit unstable to me and there are some beryl features missing I'd like back,

I'm no Beryl expert. What features are missing in Compiz-fusion?

[b9anders]

It might be me who just haven't found it yet, but simple things like a menu where I can set what happens in each screen corner when I point to it, or the option to rotate near the edge with a scroll of the wheel. I'd love to active fade to desktop but there are no bindings for it and no menu where I could just point it to the screen edge.

[trufflesdad]

I have the nvidia drivers installed and followed the scripts but get this error message..
twager@whitebox:~$ Fatal: Failed test: Composite extension
Checks indicate that it's impossible to start compiz on your system.
I am running Debian Sid..

Any help appreciated..

[b9anders]

This has been a problem for many recently, presumably due to the new xorg(?). Try installing libgl1-mesa-dri. That seems to work for many regardless of what card they use.

[craigevil]

Linux Smokers Club » Blog Archive » beryl is dead, long live compiz fusion

For the adventurous here is the way to install compiz fusion on Debian Sid/sidux in KDE:
—WARNING: THOSE PACKAGES ARE EXPERIMENTAL. PLEASE DON’T USE THEM ON PRODUCTION SYSTEMS AND DON’T COMPLAIN IF IT BREAKS STUFF–

sources.list
To add the repo, just add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list hinzufügen (one line, as root):
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/shames/de ... /unstable/ ./

Installation:
First get the gpg-key (one line, as root):
wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/shames/A42A6CF5.gpg && apt-key add A42A6CF5.gpg

Then install fusion with all plugins and stuff (one line, as root):
apt-get update && apt-get install compiz-fusion-kde
If you want the very latest inoffical plugins too (e.g. new brand new atlantis plugin):
apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-unstable

Start:
To start type in a Konsole (as user):
compiz --replace
Or try the new manager thingy:
fusion-manager
The settings-manager is available via (as user):
ccsm

For support crack open your favourite irc-client and connect to server irc.oftc.net and join channel #sidux-cf

[mzilikazi]

For support crack open your favourite irc-client and connect to server irc.oftc.net and join channel #sidux-cf

Haha you guys are supporting CF? Excellent!

Last I knew Shame was building debs with checkinstall. Do you know if this is still the case?

[craigevil]

shame and zulu9 are working on cf, I don't think either one is using checkinstall at this point. Even with shame using checkinstall Beryl ran great.

[mzilikazi]

shame and zulu9 are working on cf, I don't think either one is using checkinstall at this point. Even with shame using checkinstall Beryl ran great.

Well I won't be installing someone else's checkinstall debs. At any rate - I can't see a reason for 2 repos. Interesting that they are hosted at the same place. I wonder why they do not work together? Trevinos repo (linked above) does have ppc flavor (which Shame does not) but other than that it seems they are both keeping up to date. ATM the only difference (and it is trivial) is that Trevinos packages are actually one day ahead of Shames. Trevino is using his nifty script MakeFusionDebs.

[berts]

I have the nvidia drivers installed and followed the scripts but get this error message..
twager@whitebox:~$ Fatal: Failed test: Composite extension
Checks indicate that it's impossible to start compiz on your system.
I am running Debian Sid..

Any help appreciated..

Does your /etc/X11/xorg.conf contain the following section;

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Section "Extensions"
           Option     "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

It should be near the end of the file.

Regards,
Bert

[berts]

OK, I've had compiz-fusion running for about 4 days now, and no particular signs of instability. The pager on my gnome desktop updates as it should, following me from viewport to viewport as expected.

I haven't played with ALL the settings just yet, but every "knob" I've tweaked to date had produced the expected result. About the only thing that hasn't worked is the splash screen on start up, and this appears to be the result of a missing image file.

So far, so good.....

Regards,
Bert

[trufflesdad]

I have the nvidia drivers installed and followed the scripts but get this error message..
twager@whitebox:~$ Fatal: Failed test: Composite extension
Checks indicate that it's impossible to start compiz on your system.
I am running Debian Sid..

Any help appreciated..

Does your /etc/X11/xorg.conf contain the following section;

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Section "Extensions"
           Option     "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

It should be near the end of the file.

Regards,
Bert

Thanks a lot..I enabled this and all is well..

[m3s_4ev3r]

Hey, I installed CF with some missing dependencies that were fixed. compiz starts but emerald won;t start and when i looked, it didn't even installed

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arthur@Qae:~$ emerald --replace &
[1] 27246
bash: emerald: command not found
arthur@Qae:~$ ccsm
bash: ccsm: command not found
[1]+  Exit 127                emerald --replace
arthur@Qae:~$ ccsm
bash: ccsm: command not found
arthur@Qae:~$ su
Password: 
Qae:/home/arthur# ccsm
bash: ccsm: command not found
Qae:/home/arthur# svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes
bash: svn: command not found
Qae:/home/arthur# 

the svn command isn't working either (do i have some missing packages?)
I am on Lenny(amd64) 2.6.21.2 on AMD 3600+ X2 x64 w/onboard Nvidia 6100 Series with the drivers installed the debian way.
Everything else is removed. I can install emerald separately but it won;t install without beryl, and that s not a good thing.

Any advices on my issue?

EDIT:
and here's my xorg.conf(just in case ):

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# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder26)  Wed Jun 13 16:54:14 PDT 2007

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man /etc/X11/xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen         "Default Screen" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Files"

	# path to defoma fonts
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath        "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "i2c"
    Load           "bitmap"
    Load           "ddc"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "int10"
    Load           "vbe"
    Load           "dri"
    Load           "GLcore"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver         "kbd"
    Option         "CoreKeyboard"
    Option         "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option         "XkbModel" "pc104"
    Option         "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Configured Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "CorePointer"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Generic Monitor"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 57.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "NVIDIA Driver"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"
    Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
    Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Default Screen"
    Device         "NVIDIA Driver"
    Monitor        "Generic Monitor"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       1
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       4
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       15
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"

   Option "Composite" "Enable"

EndSection 

Compiz starts you can see some window effects but no window manager.
One more thing... I also can't access the management part of compiz, ccsm was the line... but nothing happens("you can open from cli with 'ccsm', cli being the terminal or?")