Install Compiz 0.8.12 (Compiz-Reloaded) and Emerald on Ubuntu MATE

[NOTE THIS TUTORIAL IS AWFUL. STEPS 4 - 8 STILL APPLY. FOR A BETTER TUTORIAL, CHECK OUT: Installing Compiz Reloaded ]

Here is a tutorial for those people who want cool desktop effects, such as fire (burn), wobbly windows, etc
I will be using Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS for this.

FOLLOW THIS TUTORIAL WITH CAUTION AS IT WILL OVERWRITE COMPIZ 0.9!!

Step 1. Make sure compiz is not running, open up your terminal and execute the command sudo apt-get install git

Step 2. Download the installation script by executing git clone git://northfield.ws/compiz/scripts release-0.8.12

Step 3. Let the script do it's magic by executing ./scripts/go - This will download the needed dependencies, compile compiz-reloaded and emerald. This may take several minutes to complete.

Step 4. Open up CCSM and make sure that Window Decorations is selected.


BTW: There are duplicates of plugins because some of the compiz 0.9 components still exist on the system. Compiz 0.9 components are not compatible with 0.8 components and vice-versa. Incompatible components 'usually' may not have their configuration options shown but this may not be the case for all plugins. You should proceed with caution and if at any moment compiz crashes this may mean you selected an incompatible plugin.

Step 5. Configure Window Decorations. For the command type emerald --replace

Step 6. Enable Crash Handler. For the command type 'marco --replace'

Step 7. Enable Window Management plugins such as: Move Window, Place Window, Put, Resize Window. Feel free to add and experiment with other plugins, but be careful!!

Step 8. Enable compiz. Open up MATE Tweak and Enable Compiz

Have fun!!!

Uninstallation. Execute ./scripts/uninstall to remove the installation from your machine.

Tutorial Found At: http://blog.northfield.ws/compiz-release-announcement-0-8-12/

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See, here’s the problem with this. When you upgrade Ubuntu (which invariably is what you will need to do unless you’re really into maintaining your packages and dealing with the occasional broken thing here or there), this will become broken, and probably will also break your desktop completely depending on what plugins are in use, as later versions of Compiz will certainly conflict with your older plugins, or not work altogether.

I would rather the good, old plugins from before become updated to work with the new Compiz, than needing to backtrack to an older program just because the older plugins don’t work now.

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Your 100% correct on that. I’m using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and I have not had a problem with Compiz-Reloaded and It is quite stable. Thanks for warning me about that.

Also I tried this in 16.04, you need to rebuild or reclone the git so you’re using rhe latest version; That was a trap which made me spend WAY too much time on it, and the simple fix of not using the -b flag when cloning the git appears to prevent issues from happening.

I’ll check this in a live session later, but soreau helped me figure out my issues and fixed my problems in fifteen minutes.

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I was just following what the tutorial said and thought It would have been great to share it. I’ll update that now!

I believe I am finished with my research. So here’s what I ended up doing to get it working;

#removal stuff, just in case you have it
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove emerald compiz* libdecoration0
#Install git
sudo apt-get install git
#Keep yourself organized
mkdir -p ~/git/compiz && cd ~/git/compiz
#Add sources, and update to master
git clone git://northfield.ws/compiz/scripts && cd scripts && git checkout master
#Do it.
./go

I’ll be testing the above as a shell file soon to confirm this is the thing to do in ubuntu mate.
Edit to preference. The above should work without any problems, now that I removed all the stupid from it.

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Thank you very much for share this

Just one issue. The git part fails with an error:
git clone git://northfield.ws/compiz/scripts && git checkout master Cloning into 'scripts'... remote: Counting objects: 271, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (263/263), done. remote: Total 271 (delta 155), reused 0 (delta 0) Receiving objects: 100% (271/271), 33.82 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (155/155), done. Checking connectivity... done. fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

Yeah, I know. I was working on that to make a later edit when I could figure it out, but recall I said test as shell script, not to actually consider it for actual use. I think it gets hung up on cd because I screwed that up too (Excuse me while I chastise myself for every bit of that script being wrong.) Also I screwed up; autoremove, not remove.

And, if you don’t have emerald, apt-get doesn’t work at all. Modify the first apt-get command to remove packages you already have, I only included that in case you happen to have Emerald from another source, such as the main webupd8 repo for vivid

May as well also include, the -b flag probably doesn’t matter now I think of it, but when soreau was helping me, I saw him use git branch -a to confirm what branch he was on. So I figured just to be on the safe side of things, I’d keep whatever he did to make everything work in 16.04.

It works :slight_smile: Thank you so much :slight_smile:

I made a more comprehensive text-only tutorial here, with my “As quickly as possible” minimum-bollocks methodology; https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/5875

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blur window plug-in doesn’t work. :frowning:

please help me, after clone not opne ./scripts/go apper No such file or directory

Well first, follow my guide linked in the OP, as the author of this thread had found it sufficient.

Second, ./go is wherever you cloned. I would recommend simply cloning the latest version (drop the -b flag) instead of using the older build this guide suggests to bs used.

Last bit of advice; Don’t run Compiz while doing this; go into mate-tweak and change your WM to Marco instead.
Afterward you can do this;
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager ''

That will set nothing for the window manager, which would then allow you to define which window manager is used in a startup launcher you can make in mate-session-properties which is way safer to do since you can modify the file created in ~/.config/autostart in nano outside of an X session so it runs marco instead of compiz, in case things go really wrong.