Amateur Topologist

Politics, programming, math, and science.

Properly starting Compiz in GNOME

The typical method under Ubuntu of setting fusion-icon, a Compiz manager that gives easy access to the Compiz settings manager, emerald themer, and window manager switcher, is to add an entry in Startup Applications. This isn’t an unreasonable assumption, but it turns out to not be optimal; among other things, it causes GNOME Do to drop into its standard, non-composited theme as it winds up starting before fusion-icon can launch compiz. Instead, add the line

export WINDOW_MANAGER=/usr/bin/compiz

to your ~/.gnomerc file, creating it if necessary. This way, GNOME will start compiz and never launch metacity to begin with, saving both login time and the effort of relaunching Do.

Note that if you do have an entry in Startup Applications for fusion-icon, you should edit it to

fusion-icon -n

so that it won’t launch another Compiz instance itself.

Leave a Reply