Bug#474658: compiz-gnome: replacing metacity with compiz is non-trivial
Package: compiz-gnome
Version: 0.6.3~git20080115.0ea58487-1
Severity: important
No complaints about the actual functionality of the package. It seems to
work great. Running compiz --replace from within a regular gnome session
does exactly as it is advertised to do.
However, there really needs to be a straightforward way to make compiz
your default window manager instead of metacity. Or better yet, make it
the system-wide default window manager. I've read all sorts of terrible
suggestions like adding an additional startup program via
System->Preferences->Sessions which just executes the command "compiz
--replace". The problem with this of course is that you have just wasted
several CPU cycles starting metacity only to go and "replace" it with
compiz. After several hours of searching I finally found that you can
add the file ~/.gnomerc with the line
export WINDOW_MANAGER=/usr/bin/compiz
to create the desired effect, but this is not indicated anywhere in the
documentation that I can find. Moreover, even if it was I don't believe
that it should be necessary to consult the documentation merely to get
the package working.
I think usability would improve significantly especially for beginner
users if the compiz-gnome package emulated the openbox package which
gives an additional entry in the the "Session" menu of GDM for Gnome on
top of openbox. Maybe this way we would loose fewer novices to Ubuntu ;)
Kevin
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (600, 'unstable'), (300, 'testing'), (200, 'stable'), (100, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.23-amd64.016 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages compiz-gnome depends on:
ii compiz-gtk 0.6.3~git20080115.0ea58487-1 OpenGL window and compositing mana
ii libart-2.0- 2.3.20-1 Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii libatk1.0-0 1.22.0-1 The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libbonobo2- 2.22.0-1 Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii libbonoboui 2.22.0-1 The Bonobo UI library
ii libc6 2.7-10 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libcairo2 1.5.8-1 The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii libgconf2-4 2.22.0-1 GNOME configuration database syste
ii libglib2.0- 2.16.2-1 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgnome-de 2.22.0-1 Utility library for loading .deskt
ii libgnome-wi 1:2.22.0-2 Utility library for getting window
ii libgnome2-0 2.20.1.1-1 The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii libgnomecan 2.20.1.1-1 A powerful object-oriented display
ii libgnomeui- 2.20.1.1-1 The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii libgnomevfs 1:2.22.0-2 GNOME Virtual File System (runtime
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.12.9-2 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libice6 2:1.0.4-1 X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii liborbit2 1:2.14.12-0.1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii libpango1.0 1.20.0-1 Layout and rendering of internatio
ii libpopt0 1.10-3 lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii libsm6 2:1.0.3-1+b1 X11 Session Management library
ii libstartup- 0.9-1 library for program launch feedbac
compiz-gnome recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
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