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Wiki Archlinux Org Index PHP Compiz
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Page information 3.3 Add a root menu
3.4 Allow users to shutdown/reboot
in other languages
4 Tips and tricks
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
4.1 Restoring the native window manager
Español 4.2 Enabling the Alt+F2 run dialog
Français 5 Troubleshooting
Italiano 5.1 Missing GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmaps
日本語 5.1.1 On ATI cards (first solution)
Polski
5.1.2 On ATI cards (second solution)
Português
5.1.3 On Intel chips
Русский
Türkçe 5.2 Compiz starts without window borders with NVIDIA binary drivers
中文(中国大陆) 5.3 Blank screen on resume from suspend-to-ram with NVIDIA binary drivers
5.4 Poor performance from capable graphics cards
5.5 Screen flicks with NVIDIA card
5.6 Video tearing
5.7 Compiz effects not working (GConf backend)
5.8 Fusion Icon fails to start
5.9 Alt+F4 keybinding not working (Xfce)
5.10 Emerald crashes when selecting a theme
5.11 No system bell when Compiz is running
5.12 Compiz crashes when enabling the Gnome Compatibility plugin
(GSettings backend)
5.13 Windows lose focus when unminimised
5.14 Popout windows are offset when Compiz is running
5.15 Alt-Tab switcher has no background (Emerald)
6 Known issues
6.1 Plugins in Compiz 0.8 are not present in Compiz 0.9
6.2 Xfce panel window buttons are not refreshed when a window changes
viewport
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6.3 Compiz crashes when enabling the D-Bus plugin
6.4 Workspace pager and window buttons issues
6.5 Xfce workspace switcher has wrong aspect ratio
7 See also
Installation
As of May 2013, Compiz is no longer available in the official repositories. Packages for installing
both the 0.9 and 0.8 series are available in the AUR. The two series are not parallel installable.
Note: From Compiz 0.9.8 onwards, all Compiz components are developed and distributed as a single
project. This means that a single package can provide all of the Compiz components.
Required:
Compiz — OpenGL compositing window manager with CCSM, Plugins and GTK Window Decorator.
https://launchpad.net/compiz || compizAUR
Optional:
Note: To have emerald-themes with emerald0.9, first install emerald0.9AUR and then install emerald-
AUR
themes . Doing the opposite will resolve the wrong dependencies and cause conflicts.
Fusion Icon — A tray applet for starting Compiz and switching window managers and decorators on the
fly.
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https://github.com/kozec/fusion-icon-gtk3 || fusion-icon0.9AUR
Note: The compiz-coreAUR package does not provide the GTK Window Decorator by default. Users of this
package should use emeraldAUR for #Window decoration. Alternatively, use compiz-gtk-standaloneAUR for
a Compiz Core package that also provides GTK Window Decorator.
Required:
Compiz Core — OpenGL compositing window manager.
http://www.northfield.ws/projects/compiz/ || compiz-coreAUR , compiz-gtk-standalone
AUR
Highly recommended:
CompizConfig Settings Manager — Graphical settings manager for Compiz.
http://www.northfield.ws/projects/compiz/ || ccsmAUR
Optional:
Compiz Fusion Plugins Unsupported — Unsupported Compiz plugins.
http://www.northfield.ws/projects/compiz/ || compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupportedAUR
Fusion Icon — A tray applet for starting Compiz and switching window managers and decorators on the
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Fusion Icon — A tray applet for starting Compiz and switching window managers and decorators on the
fly.
http://www.compiz.org/ || fusion-iconAUR
Starting Compiz
Tip: Depending on which package you installed Compiz from, some of these plugins may already be
activated.
Before starting Compiz, you should activate some plugins to provide basic window manager behaviour or
else you will have no ability to drag, scale or close any windows. Important plugins are listed below:
Window Decoration - provides window borders, see #Window decoration.
Move Window.
Resize Window.
Place Windows - configure window placement options.
Application Switcher - provides an Alt+Tab switcher - there are numerous alternative application switcher
plugins, for example: Shift Switcher, Static Application Switcher and more. Not all of them use the
Alt+Tab keybinding.
Window decoration
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Tip: For information on selecting and managing themes, see: Compiz configuration#Window
decoration themes.
The window decorator is the program which provides windows with borders. Unlike window managers such
as Kwin or Xfwm which provide just one decorator, users of Compiz have a choice of three: GTK Window
Decorator, KDE Window Decorator and Emerald. The GTK Window Decorator and the KDE Window
Decorator are included in the Compiz source and can be optionally compiled whilst building Compiz.
Emerald, on the other hand, is a separate, standalone decorator. The Window Decoration plugin in CCSM
must be ticked otherwise no window decorator will be started.
Choosing the decorator
In most versions of Compiz, the decorator is started with the compiz-decorator script. This will first try to
detect a GNOME or KDE session and start the appropriate decorator for that session and then, if this fails,
it will search for the emerald, gtk-window-decorator and kde4-window-decorator executables in that order and
start the first decorator it finds. For this reason, it should not usually be necessary to change the decorator
command. However, in cases where the compiz-decorator script is not available, not being used or is not
starting the desired decorator, the decorator command can be changed under CCSM -> Effects -> Window
Decoration -> Command. If just specifying the decorator executable does not cause the decorator to be
started, use the --replace switch as well.
Compiz startup
Note: It should no longer be necessary to use the ccp switch with the compiz --replace command in
order to load Compiz plugins. This bug was fixed downstream in Compiz packaging and then fixed
upstream in Compiz 0.9.12 with revision 3951 . Older Compiz versions might still need to be started
with the following: compiz --replace ccp .
$ compiz --replace
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See compiz --help for more options.
Fusion Icon
Tip: When #Autostarting Compiz in a desktop environment fusion-icon can be set as the default
command instead of compiz.
$ fusion-icon
To ensure that fusion-icon then starts Compiz, right click on the icon in the panel and go to select window
manager. Choose Compiz if it is not selected already.
Then copy the config files to your home directory as shown below:
# cp -R /etc/xdg/compiz /home/username/.config
# chown -R username:group /home/username/.config/compiz
where username is your username and group is the primary group for your user.
Then, open CCSM, navigate to the Commands plugin and in Command line 0 enter the command
compiz-boxmenu . In the Key Bindings tab, set Run command 0 to Control+Space or another key/mouse
button combination of choice. Take care not to use a combination that is already used for other functionality.
Now navigate to the Viewport Switcher plugin and click on the Desktop-based Viewport Switching tab.
Change the Plugin for initiate action to core and change Action name for initiate to run_command0_key .
You should now find that a menu appears when you click Control+Space . To launch a graphical menu editor,
click on the Edit option or run compiz-boxmenu-editor in a terminal. If you would prefer to edit your menu
manually, open the following file in your favourite editor: ~/.config/compiz/boxmenu/menu.xml . For your
changes to take effect, you must click the Reload option in your menu.
wm_name --replace
mate-panel --run-dialog
LXDE Panel
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Map the command below to the Alt+F2 key combination using the Commands plugin in CCSM.
lxpanelctl run
Xfce Appfinder
When Compiz is used in an Xfce session, the run dialog (provided by xfce4-appfinder) should work without
intervention. If you are using Xfce Appfinder in a standalone Compiz session, map the command to the
Alt+F2 key combination using the Commands plugin in CCSM.
Troubleshooting
Missing GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmaps
On ATI cards (first solution)
You may run into the following error when trying to run Compiz on an ATI card:
Missing GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
This is because Compiz's binary was compiled against Mesa's OpenGL library rather than ATI's OpenGL
library.
Firstly, copy the library into a directory to keep it because ATI's drivers will over write it:
Then you can reinstall your fglrx drivers. Now start Compiz as shown below:
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LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/mesa/libGL.so.1.2 compiz --replace &
This workaround was tested on the following card : ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 [Mobility FireGL
9000] (rev 02).
On Intel chips
Firstly, check that you're using the intel driver as opposed to i810. Then, use the following command to start
Compiz (this command must be used every time).
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Poor performance from capable graphics cards
NVIDIA and Intel chips: If everything is configured correctly but you still have poor performance with some
effects, try disabling CCSM > General Options > Display Settings > Detect Refresh Rate and instead
choose a value manually.
NVIDIA chips only: The inadequate refresh rate with Detect Refresh Rate may be due to an option called
DynamicTwinView being enabled by default which plays a factor in accurately reporting the maximum
refresh rate that your card and display support. You can disable DynamicTwinView by adding the following
line to the "Device" or "Screen" section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf , and then restarting
your computer:
/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
Video tearing
If you experience video tearing when using Compiz, try enabling the Workarounds plugin in CCSM. Once
enabled, ensure that the following options are enabled in Workarounds: Force complete redraw on initial
damage, Force full screen redraws (buffer swap) on repaint.
If you are using Intel graphics and the workaround above does not fix the video tearing, see Intel
graphics#Tear-free video.
Also see, #Poor performance from capable graphics cards.
Make sure that all plugins are listed. If they are not, try to install the Compiz schema manually (do not run
this command as root):
$ gconftool-2 --install-schema-file=/usr/share/gconf/schemas/compiz-decorator-gtk.schemas
$ fusion-icon
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If Compiz directly replaces Xfwm4 (in other words, if compiz --replace is executed whilst Xfwm4 is running),
then the Alt-F4 key combination will become non-functional. In this instance, run compiz --replace again.
This will mean that Compiz replaces itself and so regains control of the Alt-F4 key combination. For this
reason, if you wish to use Compiz in the Xfce desktop, it is a good idea to not autostart compiz --replace
at login but instead to set compiz as the default window manager in xfconf - see Xfce#Default window
manager.
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You may find that certain windows (such as a Chromium window) will lose focus when unminimised. See
the following upstream bug report . One possible solution is to enable the Keep previews of minimized
windows option, located within the Workarounds plugin.
Note: If you use the Chrome/Chromium browser and you enable this workaround, you will need to ensure
that the Use system title bar and borders option within Chrome is enabled. If Chrome's own titlebar is used
with the Keep previews of minimized windows Compiz workaround then when Chrome is minimized, the
desktop beneath will become unresponsive.
Known issues
Xfce panel window buttons are not refreshed when a window changes viewport
You may find that if you right click on a window title and choose an option such as Move to Workspace
Right then the window will move but the window button will still be visible in the viewport the window moved
from until you switch viewports. This issue can be fixed by replacing xfce4-panel with xfce4-panel-compizAUR
which incorporates a patch for this issue. See the following upstream bug report for more information.
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may display issues such as showing all window buttons in all workspaces or the workspace pager may only
show one workspace available. The panels listed below are known to be compatible:
xfce4-panel
mate-panel
perlpanel
gnome-panel
cairo-dock
See also
Compiz in Launchpad
Compiz Home , including wiki and forum (website and wiki are unmaintained)
Troubleshooting - Compiz Wiki , (wiki is unmaintained)
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