Yesterday I went through how you can enable restricted drivers in Ubuntu 7.10, but that was only part of my struggle while trying to get Compiz Fusion turned on. Enabling the advanced graphics should technically have been a piece of cake after getting my 3D-enabled ATI drivers installed on my ATI X1400 graphics card, but that wasn’t exactly the case.
I went to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and tried filling in the Extra bubble. That should have worked, but instead of being overwhelmed with the amazing eye candy that Compiz Fusion brings I was presented with an error message stating that “The composite extension is not available“. And I had my hopes up. *sigh*
I went hunting around the Ubuntu forum to see if I was alone in experiencing such an issue, and it turns out I wasn’t. There were a lot of people trying to figure out how to work around the problem, but one member hit it right on the dot. Here’s what I had to do:
- Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. This is going to be used to install two packages that you’ll need to have.
- The first package that you’ll need to search for is xserver-xgl, and check the box next to it.
- Now do another search for compizconfig-settings-manager, which isn’t needed but might as well be installed. This provides a user interface for configuring the different settings of Compiz Fusion.
- Go back to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and fill in the Effects bubble.
- You may need to restart Ubuntu, but after that you can use Compiz Fusion in all its glory!
I plan on writing up a review of several Compiz Fusion features later on, and I’ll admit that it is worth any extra work you need to do to get it running. Don’t forget that you installed the Compiz Settings Manager in step 3 which provides an interface for configuring the different Compiz Fusion plugins. That can be accessed by going to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings:
I’m new to Ubuntu but in this Lifehacker screenshot tour [[tinyurl.com]] they include information on turning on Compiz Fusion…
” …those who want multiple desktops on a cube, flaming windows and other effects will need to install the extensive Compiz settings manager:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager “
That’s true, and I included that in step 3 above. The screenshot of the configuration screen is located at the end of the article. I just chose not to go the terminal route to get it done, because I prefer GUI’s for installing packages.
Great help of you.
The Compiz Fusion is a joy to look at.
I like to use it for my visual presentations which are more impressive since Compiz is used as a part of it.
Thank you for sharing this tip with me !
Not bashing Ubuntu, but I had no troubles enabling Compiz in Mandriva 2008. Mandriva is back into the game.
I actually tried to get Ubuntu’s desktop effects running this very weekend. I couldn’t even get Compiz to start, it just returned an error saying “Desktop effects could not be enabled”. I won’t get into the details, but it had something to do with my X server configuration file.
When I installed the control panel that Ryan mentioned I realized how cool Compiz actually is. It’s not just eye candy, it also gives you access to lots of cool tools to manage your windows. Friggin’ awesome.
I also thought that Compiz was some tough application that my cheap video card couldn’t handle. Well, I turned out to be wrong about that. I’m impressed.
Just found out that Compiz makes the Firefox window fade to gray when it’s frozen. Neat!
Glad I can help!
It really just depends on your graphics card. People with the most popular graphics cards will probably slide through without any issues on both Ubuntu and Mandriva.
It’s definitely not just eye candy. The virtual desktop wall is super nice being able to drag stuff from one desktop to another. I also enjoy the Vista-like thumbnail previews when you hover over the programs in the “Taskbar”. I think I had to enable that feature because it was disabled by default.
I thought that was cool the first time that I saw it as well. Too bad that something cool like that often brings bad news (a.k.a. a program is frozen).
Man Compiz-Fusion comes with so many options…loving it!
I think I’ve spent a few hours playing with them all and getting them configured. It did way more than I had expected. The best thing about the configuration options is that you can customize all of the hotkeys.
Imagine how long it took to develop all this…
I often wondered about that kind of stuff. Like how they are able to find the time to work on a project they are getting paid for, and how many people are actually involved in it. It’s so smoothly done that it makes my friends drool when they see it.
Thanks Ryan,
For this help. it all finally worked on my dell 6400/1505 on ati 1400 .
being a newbee on linux i had been struggling all over the place doing all sort of things. untill i came across your two short articles.
Installed ubuntu fresh again and followed this article and the previous one and it all worked. Thank You very much again for posting this..
Ha, I’m not surprised that it worked perfectly since we apparently have the same computer.
What are the odds?
thanks. i have a nvidia geforce 6200. i have enabled the driver with the restricted drivers manager, then sudo nvidia-xconfig –add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24 (as on [help.ubuntu.com])and then update all software on the sistem, but did not worked. compiz was not complete. then i have instaled a few other things and after that i have done the steps in here. now it seems to work… thanks again.
Well, on my lap top xserver-xgl only slows down effects, and cube for example while moving with mouse has intermittent movements
I’ve uninstall xserver-xgl and everything become normal except Emerald’s themes still doesn’t work