Start compiz per script instead of MATE Tweak

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi all,

I made a small script with basic settings on new ubuntuMATE installations. I would like to set compiz as the default window manager. Because of that I need to activate compiz with a bash command. The following command does not work (https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Compiz/):

compiz --replace &

Can anybody help?
Many thanks.

2

Hi corano,

Sorry if this turns out to be no use for you. But with the Compiz Reloaded I’m using the command to start compiz is compiz ccp --replace

3

Hi Alif_Dal_Mim,

thanks for your reply. There are 2 problems with compiz ccp --replace:

  • The menu in MATE Tweak shows still the old window manager (‘Marco’ in my case )
  • The terminal shows a warning: compiz (decor) - Warn: No default decoration found, placement will not be correct

And it seems that the method with MATE Tweak is doing something more because it takes a little bit longer (about 3 sec instead of 1 sec with commandline)

4

Hi @corano, not sure if this helps as I got playing with the 17.10 structure of settings.

I did find the permanent setting that corresponds to the MATE-tweak setting. it doesn’t change window manager on the fly but makes it permanent thus active on next reboot or addable to your script, of course.

gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager compiz

I hope my assumption of 17.10 is correct. gsettings is nicely command-completion friendly.

1 Like
5

Hi @Bill_MI,

gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager compiz

Wow! Great! That seems to work!
And it works even with logging out and in again, without rebooting. I tested it with UbuntuMATE 16.04.3.
I knew gsettings, but it’s sometime not easy to find the correct option :slight_smile:

Many thanks!!!

6

Hi,

another method to activate the changed setting without rebooting is the following command:

gksu service lightdm restart

Bye…

7

Great! I thought you also wanted to change on the fly.:slight_smile:

As for gsettings, there’s a GUI dconf-editor that I’d been using for so long I didn’t realize how gsettings had become super command-completion friendly. It completes key names, too.

The reason I was looking in 17.10 was dconf-editor port to GTK3+ has forced it upon me. 16.04 still has the old dconf-editor. But I like what I see with gsettings.

8

A way I handled this previously is to make an autostart script which I can edit in shell via nano when things go wrong.