I've been using Slackware for about five years but I've never been bothered about compiz so it's all a bit new to me. Since I installed Slackware 13 (64bit) yesterday I noticed that compiz is one of the pre-installed packages so I thought I'd give it a blast.

I should probably have done a bit more research but I read on a forum that running "compiz --replace" will replace the default window manager with compiz so I gave it a try.

The problem is that now none of my windows have borders so I can't move them or do anything. The worst part about the whole affair is that I can't even figure out how to revert to whatever the old window manager was.

Any ideas?

EDIT : Just thought I'd add that I'm using XFCE.

EDIT++ : I've managed to revert the window manager by deleting my .cache directory. XFCE obviously maintainted the apps that were running and one of them was compiz. Now just to figure out how I can get compiz working. I presume emerald is the key...

You can also do by pressing ALT-F2 and run xfwm4.

This threw me for a loop, too. Compiz has a very small amount of mostly outdated documentation. There are many plugins that need to be enabled in CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) in order to get basic functionality. The key one that you're missing is the "Window Decoration" plugin.

What I didn't understand is that compiz is simply a compositing manager and requires a "window decorator," along with several other plugins, to provide full window manager functionality.

I also use XFCE, and I chose to use the emerald window decorator. There are also gtk-window-decorator and kde-window-decorator. I chose emerald because it is more themeable than gtk-window-decorator. Obviously since I use XFCE, I didn't choose kde-window-decorator.

Down to business.
Launch ccsm and enable the following plugins:
Window Decoration
all plugins in "Image Loading" category (other plugins may depend on those)
Crash handler
Mouse position polling
Regex Matching
Resize Info
Session Management
Video Playback
Move Window
Place Windows
Resize Window
Application Switcher, Ring Switcher, Shift Switcher, or Static Application Switcher
Window Rules

Now to fix the fact that you still won't see any window borders:
Go into the Window Decoration plugin and enter the path to either the emerald or gtk-window-decorator binary in the "Command" field.

This will give you a basic setup... start playing with the crazy effects!

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