Enabling metacity compositing manager April 28, 2008
Posted by yoho in Linux and OpenSource, Mandriva.trackback
I’ve just switched for a few days to GNOME and I remembered a discussion about activating metacity compositing manager. I haven’t found the information I was looking for on the Internet, but Olivier told me his “Jus de cuisson” mentioned a discussion thread back in January.
I eventually found the discussion thread, but what was stated was wrong (well, it was probably true when the message was sent, but not anymore) : the compositing manager is not enabled by default.
The compositing manager doesn’t give you as much effects and eye-candies as compiz, but it’s enough for a daily and professional usage. Here’s the list of things enabled with the compositing manager of metacity (quote from Frederic Crozat):
-Composited managed desktop (some applications might use it, like transparent applications such as gnome-terminal and probably others)
-brand new alt-TAB with screenshot of applications and highlight of to-be-focused app
-nice shadow around windows (now, you can have an idea on the initial design of Ia Ora window theme
-NO openGL required !!
So, here’s how you can enable it (should work with any distro using a recent enough metacity) :
gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager true
To disable compositor :
gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager false
It’s useful also when you want to use avant-window-navigator as it needs compositing support.
Before you had to use Compiz to be able to use AWN
It was enabled when the message was written, but disabled again a few weeks later as it just caused too many problems – for several users, it broke Metacity.
@Fabrice : Excellent, I’m gonna try AWN right away.
@Adam : Yes, I must admit I haven’t tried yet many applications and didn’t play a lot with metacity.
I m trying it. I was looking desesperatly for a mean to use awn without compiz on my thinkpad whose 3D card is not good. The only little bug I have for the moment is it slashes the screen in firefox for a few milliseconds when i go too fast scrolling a page.
For information, I found out Miro is unable to play video files when you’re using AIGLX and compositing… So I went back to a non-composited desktop because I use Miro a lot.
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