So it turns out the Compiz implementation for MATE is not as responsive as it could be and prone to crashes, particularly when window switching while running Steam. Several members of the Ubuntu MATE community have been helpful sharing their experiences and Compiz settings. I’ve spent the evening refining and rationalising the Compiz profile for MATE.
The end result is greater consistency between Marco and Compiz keybindings, far fewer Compiz plugins are required, memory consumption is down, responsiveness is improved, I haven’t crashed Compiz (or Steam) and I’ve replaced the Desktop Cube with the Desktop Wall
Yes, you read that right. The Desktop Cube is no longer the default workspace switcher. It was sadly slowing up some systems and one of the culprits causing Compiz to crash. If you love the Cube then you can still enable it via Compiz Config Settings Manager. I’m sure you’ll agree that providing a functional and stable configuration is more important than glitz?
These changes are not released to Ubuntu MATE 15.10 yet, but they have been approved by the upstream Compiz developers.