sorry for the dumb question, better 5 minutes of being stupid and not a life of ignorance.

how are they related in the feisty fawn?
I can choose either of them thru synaptic.
which should I use? a bit confused.

already had it working before, put in kiba-dock. And I wnat my cube back. also when I launch it, I would loose the window manager. not x itself but the max resize close buttons on the apps window frame.

Feisty Fawn chose Compiz as the standard compositing window manager as it was the more stable branch at the time. You can simply activate it by choosing System - Preferences - Desktop effects. Assuming you have a graphics driver installed that supports direct 3d. (see www.ubuntuguide.org for details)

Beryl was a branch of Compiz, but they have since merged into compiz-fusion. You can still install it though, if you want.

I would take whatever is in the repositories. Compiz or Beryl... both good.

What happens when the window decoration dissappears is that emerald doesn't load. In compiz window management is separate from window decoration. Emarald is in charge of decorating. You should use the beryl-manager to start the compositing manager (whether it's beryl or compiz)... That should take care of emerald... usually. If the problem persists, try to give a more specific description of how you installed it, and how you started it.

http://wiki.opencompositing.org/Welcome

http://www.opencompositing.org/

All the info!

Mostly these days when you install Compiz Fusion you get the latest Compiz and the Compiz Fusion plugins. You activate it with the fusion-icon, and control it with the CCSM or Compiz Configuration Settings Manager.

Ubuntu also has a wiki page for it.

Compiz latest release is a stable release. Compiz Fusion latest release is official, but is considered an unstable release. Almost every couple of days the repo's are updated with the latest improvements and bug fixes. Sometimes things like installation folders and the whole look of CCSM change dramatically overnight. So it's a fast and furious development.

I use it on Debian Lenny. The last couple of days of upgrades have improved things tremendously. I'd almost start calling it stable.

Anyway, there's lots to read over there and Compiz Fusion is the way to go now over Beryl. And if you've got Compiz you might as well get the latest version and then you might as well get the nice Control Panel and icon (CCSM and the Fusion Icon.) For those you need the Compiz Fusion packages.

Otherwise, you can still control even the latest Compiz with the traditional gconf control panel controls.

whooooah!

...looking at the new screenshots

That's what happens when you don't pay attention to a project for a month or two. Last thing I read was "It will take a couple of months until all the plugins are ported", and now this!

/ edit
looking at the videos... I thought I would wait until Gutsy... I simply can't. Anubis, forget what I said about getting whatever is in the repos. You want the latest release. This is f*ing amazing!

Ok, this took a little while:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Co...r/CompizFusion

This is basically how I did it... Don't forget to remove any other additional repositories you might have added that contain conflicting packages (beryl repository for example). It might also be a good idea to remove any existing installation of compiz (search for compiz in synaptic and mark everything for removal that is marked as installed.)

have fun, I know I will

antialializing by default! this is so 1337!

Heh heh, yeah it's some pretty cool stuff, eh?

Check out the 3D windows plugin. Not only, like in Beryl, do they jut out, but the jut out a whole bunch! And when you land the cube (while you have windows open) the 3D windows come to the screen first and then the cube and toolbar slowly zoom to the screen to catch up! Just saw that after today's updates. It's probably just different default plugin settings within the 3D window plugin but I sure was wowed by it.

There's loads of things to play with in ccsm, but keep in mind that some plugins don't play well with others. Like if you activate the Animations plugin you've got to turn off Minimize Windows and that other one (I forget which) to the left of it. Animation does its own effect for minimize. I changed it to Fire!

And there are 3 ways that Compiz runs. In CCSM, to the left are preferences. The gconf and kde backends are buggy right now so it is recommended to set that setting to use the flat file ini configuration.

I start things by doing:

fusion-icon --qt3 &

If you type in the decorator you want into the box in the Window Decorations plugin in CCSM, like:

kde-window-decorator --replace

OR:

emerald --replace

then the decorator starts properly as soon as fusion-icon starts Compiz.

I don't put an autostart in because I like to close KDE's Desktop Preview and Pager from the right click menu on the taskbar and then when I login I load Compiz first and then add the applet Desktop Preview and Pager. And you set KControl's Multiple Desktops to 1. This way the pager works properly.

And make sure to uncheck Use Translucency and Shadows in the Desktop, Window Behavior area of KControl. Compiz has its own stuff and KDE will interfere otherwise. I also make sure in Appearence and Themes, Style that Enable Effects is unchecked in the Effects tab.

When I log out, I exit from the fusion-icon, remove the pager, and I'm set.

When I used Gnome I needed to do metacity --replace & before logging out so that fusion-icon still had Emerald checked off when I started it again. Otherwise it wouldn't load Emerald properly. And in Gnome I only needed:

fusion-icon &

to start things as Gnome's fusion-icon doesn't use python-qt4 by default like starting it in KDE does. At least Debian Lenny's python-qt4 isn't a new enough version for fusion-icon to appear in the system tray so it needs the qt3 switch there.

I use the kde decorator in KDE and Emerald in Gnome because I couldn't get gtk-window-decorator to apply any decorations.

Just a few helpful hints!

Guys thanks for all the info, I got to read all this stuff, and remove all the crap and additional repos I added.

So I guess it's safe to say compiz-fusion is the way.