Department of Engineering

Compiz

Compiz "is a compositing manager, which means that it enhances the overall user interaction by adding fancy effects to your windows ... Compiz can also be a window manager, which means that it is the software between you and your desktop apps. It enables you to move or resize windows, to switch workspaces, to switch windows easily (using alt-tab or so), and so on."

The effects, such as a minimization effect and a cube workspace are implemented as loadable plugins. It uses small programs called decorators which draw the window borders with the usual minimize, maximize and close buttons.

All this means that there's much that can be customised. We defaulted to using Compiz in October 2010, but we didn't switch on all the fancy features. The older alternative on our system was metacity. This page shows you how to customise Compiz or use metacity instead (which you may need to do with certain programs if you have an old graphics card).

Configuring

In the Utilities section of the Application Browser (the panel that appears when you click on at the bottom of our screen) there are 2 configuration programs. The "Appearance" icon doesn't help you with Compiz. Use one of the following

• this runs a program called SimpleCompizConfigSettingsManager that lets you enable/disable the effects, Once you've clicked on the box , you can then selectively switch on/off the individual features and customise them.
• the runs the CompizConfigSettingsManager program which lets you change more features, but doesn't let you switch them all off.

These 2 programs are also available in the "Look and Feel" section of the program in the System section of the Application Browser

Compiz can be disabled for the rest of a session by typing

    metacity --replace &

You can switch from metacity to Compiz for the rest of a session by typing

    compiz --replace ccp &