Compiz and bling

I really don't have much to say here – so I try to do it as long as possible, as an exercise of saying nothing by tons.

Compiz is a window manager, or 'compositing manager'.

It makes windows wobbly, it has that famous desktop cube. And lot, I mean LOT more effects. By the way, some of them are excluding and when applied simultaneously, simply crash your desktop. It's an enormous eyecandy. Visit the link above for more info.

Cons: Wastes quite a bit of resources. As we are living in modern times and having a reasonable hardware, it doesn't have to matter.

Compiz doesn't have to play along with your desktop, though. Its OK, for example, with Xfce. As mentioned, not necessarily with current Mate (1.4). I haven't an idea how it behaves with other DEs.

Wine – I am quoting, what: 'is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD' – does not play nice with Compiz. So, if you want to run (try at least) your Windows darlings on Linux through Wine, then Compiz is out. It's even advised to remove any compositing manager when running Wine.

And here are some links about Compiz:

1. pimping xubuntu

2. more of the same

3. and more

Why Xubuntu only? Because it's where I did my Thing.

But everything depends on ones' hardware/software configuration – not one of those tutorials worked 100% for me. Had to improvise.

Feel free to peruse google, forums, and whatever according to your needs.
When feeling strong and wise enough, install it from repository.

Then open it's configuration, scream, look for tutorial. When finished with conf, open terminal, type: compiz --replace.

It was easy install in Xubuntu. With Mate, do read forums. How to take out Marco and so on.

NB! It's very smart to know before swap what your current windows manager is – in case you have to 'replace' it back.

Summary – if you are the one who likes bling – it might be worth to try KDE instead. You get whole fancy package without additional worries. And – as we are hanging around Mint – why not Linux Mint KDE? Some say, though, that Kubuntu is even better...

KDE is default (main) DE of OpenSuse (which is a bit more challenging than Ubuntu, but heck, why not – some early self-mutilation makes you stronger).

Oh, and Zorin OS has Compiz installed by default – and looks blingy as hell. See my short Zorin-test in 'Other distros tried'.

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