Cool Ubuntu feature!

[bilbo.san]

Hey everyone!
I just found a nice cool feature in Ubuntu, it is a -window switching function-, it is something similar to Vista came up with...
I think there should be a page on the official website with these kind of really cool things in Ubuntu, so more people will understand why Ubuntu is great and make the switch.

[muse3332]

well maybe you should tell us how to do it dont you think :D

[juancarlospaco]

These things are normal things for us...

[bilbo.san]

well maybe you should tell us how to do it dont you think :D

Yeah,... you are right!
Just hold down the -Windows key-, (you know, the 'start' key to pull the win menu up), hold it down and then hit the TAB key, to go on switching just press the TAB key over and over... and that's it.

e.

[bilbo.san]

These things are normal things for us...

Yeah, well... but this is beginners talk... right?
Besides, it is really neat to find new things.

[mvalviar]

Well unlike vista's window switching feature. Ubuntu (compiz) doesn't have a show desktop entry. I mean you can't cycle over to and entry that is meant to show the desktop. I hope compiz developers will add that feature in future versions.

If you like to have more "neat" desktop functions/effects try installing CompizConfig Settings Manager. You can find it in Synaptic. You can make windows wobble, your desktop burn, turn it to a cube, sphere or cylinder. Beam your windows up etc. Try it its fun.

[Chris Edgell]

Hi, bilbo.san

{I wish you'd put what type of Ubuntu you use on your user pages, so it would show up here} I went to do what you said, if I understood you correctly, ( I opened 3 windows and then held down the Windows key and hit Tab 3 or 4 times, but nothing happened. I like your spirit, and appreciated such a tidbit of interesting knowledge...don't stop.

__________________________________________________ ______________________________

Never be daunted by cynicism, sarcasm, or facetiousness. Be fun and fresh anyway.
Mother Teresa

[presence1960]

Hi, bilbo.san

{I wish you'd put what type of Ubuntu you use on your user pages, so it would show up here} I went to do what you said, if I understood you correctly, ( I opened 3 windows and then held down the Windows key and hit Tab 3 or 4 times, but nothing happened. I like your spirit, and appreciated such a tidbit of interesting knowledge...don't stop.

__________________________________________________ ______________________________

Never be daunted by cynicism, sarcasm, or facetiousness. Be fun and fresh anyway.
Mother Teresa

It works for me, if only two windows are open it auto switches to the other window, if more than two are open it shoes a thumbnail of each window and allows you to use Tab to select which one to bring into focus.

[steveneddy]

Hi, bilbo.san

{I wish you'd put what type of Ubuntu you use on your user pages, so it would show up here} I went to do what you said, if I understood you correctly, ( I opened 3 windows and then held down the Windows key and hit Tab 3 or 4 times, but nothing happened. I like your spirit, and appreciated such a tidbit of interesting knowledge...don't stop.

__________________________________________________ ______________________________

Never be daunted by cynicism, sarcasm, or facetiousness. Be fun and fresh anyway.
Mother Teresa

This is a feature of Compiz called Shift Switcher.

If I am not mistaken we had it in Compiz and Microsoft stole it from that project. But I may be wrong. I remember seeing a version of this in the last days of Beryl before the merge.

All of the keyboard shortcuts are in the CCSM utility for each screen effect.

I think Compiz is going away or out of development due to the new Gnome 3.0 with Gnome Shell.

[Vignesh S]

{I wish you'd put what type of Ubuntu you use on your user pages, so it would show up here} I went to do what you said, if I understood you correctly, ( I opened 3 windows and then held down the Windows key and hit Tab 3 or 4 times, but nothing happened. I like your spirit, and appreciated such a tidbit of interesting knowledge...don't stop.

The window switcher function will only work on hardware that can take it i.e. graphics processor has to have a reasonable amount of power, and I'm very certain that most modern hardware has that capability. I don't think old (as in, older than 6 years old) laptop graphic chips have that.

However, if you are certain that you have the right hardware, go into System ----> Preferences ----- > Appearance Manager. From here, click the "Visual Effects" tab, and then click on the dot that is next to "normal". If all goes well, it should automatically switch to it. However, if it comes up with a dialog box saying that "Desktop effects could not be enabled", then either there isn't a driver for the graphics chip/card or the graphics simply cannot take it. If it is the former, then there might be drivers/tweaks to get it working.

Since I don't use Xubuntu, I'm not entirely sure if the instruction will be the same. If there's any differences, I'll come back here and edit the above :-)

BTW, Ubuntu special effects are AWESOME

[Chris Edgell]

This is a feature of Compiz called Shift Switcher.


All of the keyboard shortcuts are in the CCSM utility for each screen effect.


What is CCSM?

Thanks

[presence1960]

What is CCSM?

Thanks

compizconfig settings manager (ccsm in the repositories)

[Chris Edgell]

I am trying to understand...(I would like to see a tree or a chart of all the parts and pieces of Linux...Ubuntu...

That's the big world to me; now my little world is...is...is...

Do I have XUbuntu because my computer is old or small? Do I have Gnome because of the same limitations...how much space it takes up or how much horsepower it takes to run other fancier stuff?

And who will simply tell me how to answer the above questions...what have I got?

[Vignesh S]

I am trying to understand...(I would like to see a tree or a chart of all the parts and pieces of Linux...Ubuntu...

That's the big world to me; now my little world is...is...is...

Do I have XUbuntu because my computer is old or small? Do I have Gnome because of the same limitations...how much space it takes up or how much horsepower it takes to run other fancier stuff?

And who will simply tell me how to answer the above questions...what have I got?

Xubuntu is a lightweight variant of Ubuntu. It runs the XFCE desktop environment which is not as heavy on system resources as GNOME is. Just because one has old hardware, doesn't mean it can't have GNOME. Vice-versa also applies, 64-bit Xubuntu won't run on old hardware because 64-bit processors weren't around more than 3-4 years ago :-P. As an example of personal experience, I ran GNOME on my old IBM Thinkpad R31 and it couldn't take any special effects, yet on an older 2001 desktop that had a low-end graphics card on it, it could all sorts of graphics my newer desktop can do :-D (by the way, I personally wouldn't settle for less then GNOME, so I personally cannot tell you if Xubuntu goes any faster than Ubuntu, though it probably is)

As for getting these cool special effects to work, it mainly depends on what graphics controller (either an integrated graphics chip or a graphics card), though the processor and the RAM will also play an important role in getting special effects to work.

Please post the version and speed of the processor, amount of RAM and graphics chip/card you currently have on the computer you wish to enable special effects on.

In case you have no idea about any of the above:

Finding out processor and RAM:
Go to System ----> Adminstration ----> System Monitor and click on the "System" tab at the top. There it will say the amount of RAM you have and

Go to Applications ----> Accessories ----> Terminal and type in lspci and post whatever came up on here and we'll be able to tell you which graphics controller you have and whether special effects will work :-D

EDIT:I have just found out that Xubuntu doesn't even have Compiz installed by default :-S. I'll learn some stuff about Xubuntu and if all goes well, I'll be able to tell you how to get those cool special effects working

[sandy8925]

KDE 4 is really good. But it would run slow on machines with less than 512 mb ram.

Some Compiz effects are slow on older Intel graphics cards like my Intel 910/915 GML.

[sandy8925]

Some Compiz effects are slow on older Intel graphics cards like my Intel 910/915 GML.

[VinnyJ1701]

Yeah,... you are right!
Just hold down the -Windows key-, (you know, the 'start' key to pull the win menu up), hold it down and then hit the TAB key, to go on switching just press the TAB key over and over... and that's it.

e.

Interesting. I found, by chance, that if you move your mouse point to the extreme bottom right of your screen (more like off the screen), all 3 desktops (in my case 3) become visible. you can click on the one you want, or just repeat the mouse movement to get back to the desktop you're using.

Peace,

Vince :guitar:

[3rdalbum]

Well unlike vista's window switching feature. Ubuntu (compiz) doesn't have a show desktop entry. I mean you can't cycle over to and entry that is meant to show the desktop. I hope compiz developers will add that feature in future versions.

I don't think there's much demand for it. If you want to see your desktop, you switch to another virtual desktop - right? Well that's what I do! (Ubuntu also ships with a "Show Desktop" button on its Gnome panel).

If you want to program it in Compiz or sponsor someone to program it in Compiz, then that's fine.

[Chris Edgell]

I DO see the GNOME footprint in lots of places, but actually I have Xfce desktop. (Is that the default desktop for XUbuntu? Is that because it consumes less resources?) So since I have the Xfce, do I have Gnome doing SOMETHING? (If I DON'T have KDE, then there is no good reason to install (?) "their" updates, right?)

Vignesh S, thank you very much for your time and knowledge. I put the results of your first question (?) in my signature. The second is in the screenshot.

I WISH -- I WISH -- I WISH that there was a site that simply states what the acronyms represent. Sometimes I just can't remember (I should probably keep a list myself).

[presence1960]

For really lightweight desktop try lxde. You can install it from synaptic.

For a Ubuntu-based lightweight distro featuring lxde try Masonux 9.04. See here (http://sites.google.com/site/masonux/home) for Masonux 9.04. I tried it for a couple months and it worked really good. Unfortunately I do not need a lightweight desktop.

[Chris Edgell]

Hi "Presence",

(Thanks) Could you elaborate? Like, why would I WANT a lighter-weight desktop, (to conserve resources)?

And, you can't believe how afraid I've gotten to try something new, like, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Even just now, after going to System Monitor, I can't make it go away; I can minimize it, but it won't go away. I ran that xkill and scared myself so bad when everything on the panel disappeared and then spread chaotically onto my desktop--thank goodness they all settled into their own places again...but with the minimized form of the system monitor on that bottom panel. Go figure.

I will go and look at that Masonux, but like I said, I am afraid of change now.

[presence1960]

Hi "Presence",

(Thanks) Could you elaborate? Like, why would I WANT a lighter-weight desktop, (to conserve resources)?

I will go and look at that Masonux, but like I said, I am afraid of change now.

Exactly, and that would make your machine a little faster.

Looking at your specs in your signature the one thing that could be the best to speed up your machine is to add more RAM.

[Chris Edgell]

Is my RAM the 495.9 MiB? Is it possible for you to tell me how much that number might change?

[presence1960]

Is my RAM the 495.9 MiB? Is it possible for you to tell me how much that number might change?

That depends on your motherboard. You need to refer to the documentation for your motherboard to see how many slots you have for RAM and how much each slot can handle as well as the max amount of RAM your motherboard can accommodate. If you don't have the documentation for your machine or the motherboard you can get it from the manufacturer's web site.

If you are unsure about how to proceed you can bring it to a computer shop and have them do it. RAM is pretty cheap nowadays.

P.S. you probably have 512 MB of RAM. You are showing 495 MB probably because some of that is reserved for video. At the very least I would speculate you will be able to add another 512 MB of RAM.

[Chris Edgell]

Okay, thanks! About my wishes. I wish there would be a computer dictionary that was always being updated. There is no such thing, I'm pretty sure. A book would be out of date the first day, what with these rapid and constant changes. Hey, is that an oxymoron, constant change??!!

[natravis]

Hi, bilbo.san

{I wish you'd put what type of Ubuntu you use on your user pages, so it would show up here} I went to do what you said, if I understood you correctly, ( I opened 3 windows and then held down the Windows key and hit Tab 3 or 4 times, but nothing happened. I like your spirit, and appreciated such a tidbit of interesting knowledge...don't stop.

I imagine that it is a property of the window manager, not inherent to Ubuntu. So XFCE (Xubuntu's default window manager) may not share this feature or perhaps it is Compiz, but I find that unlikely.

[presence1960]

Okay, thanks! About my wishes. I wish there would be a computer dictionary that was always being updated. There is no such thing, I'm pretty sure. A book would be out of date the first day, what with these rapid and constant changes. Hey, is that an oxymoron, constant change??!!

we have better than a dictionary...Google. Whatever computer term, hardware , software, etc you need help with just google it.

[bilbo.san]

Well unlike vista's window switching feature. Ubuntu (compiz) doesn't have a show desktop entry. I mean you can't cycle over to and entry that is meant to show the desktop. I hope compiz developers will add that feature in future versions.

If you like to have more "neat" desktop functions/effects try installing CompizConfig Settings Manager. You can find it in Synaptic. You can make windows wobble, your desktop burn, turn it to a cube, sphere or cylinder. Beam your windows up etc. Try it its fun.

That is what I wanted to know!!!
Thanks!!!!

[Chris Edgell]

I had begun to wonder where you went bilbo.san. I didn't mean to "hijack" your thread,; I'm glad you got what you wanted to know!

[Chris Edgell]

Presence, you say to google. Well go google RAM, it is still very hard, if not impossible to find what that stands for. I remember what ROM stands for but it's not so easy to just go and find what RAM stands for, regardless of google. Google any acronym, you won't find what it stands for. Go Google CCSM, I had to come here to find out what it stands for... you see my point, it's not easy to discover about these acronyms!

[bilbo.san]

I had begun to wonder where you went bilbo.san. I didn't mean to "hijack" your thread,; I'm glad you got what you wanted to know!

Well... I have been freezing out there with this cold temperatures!
:D I just came in and there are lots of cool suggestions to improve... including the Compiz Settings control, which I am about to install and see what else I can find and play with!

[bilbo.san]

If I am not mistaken we had it in Compiz and Microsoft stole it from that project. But I may be wrong. I remember seeing a version of this in the last days of Beryl before the merge.

All of the keyboard shortcuts are in the CCSM utility for each screen effect.

I think Compiz is going away or out of development due to the new Gnome 3.0 with Gnome Shell.

I noticed that Windows has stolen many many things from Compiz and Ubuntu in general... but anyway. If compiz is going away, it would be really bad for the linux community.

[presence1960]

Presence, you say to google. Well go google RAM, it is still very hard, if not impossible to find what that stands for. I remember what ROM stands for but it's not so easy to just go and find what RAM stands for, regardless of google. Google any acronym, you won't find what it stands for. Go Google CCSM, I had to come here to find out what it stands for... you see my point, it's not easy to discover about these acronyms!

I have to say you did not look too hard at all. I googled ccsm and RAM and got hits from google. See my screenshots and note my pointer , but there are other hits as well.

[ibuclaw]

ABT is more of a support subforum, moving to T&E.

[Chris Edgell]

presence, you are absolutely right, I did not perservere very diligently. Now I see that it doesn't really pop out at you...Yes...I had to read through some stuff...and I had to think too. Don't be too hard on me, sometimes, I admit, I just don't have my brain in gear. Well, you woke me up to see that it's much more available than I even imagined. And, especially about RAM in Wiki, I learned a lot! Thanks for the wake-up call.

[Vignesh S]

I DO see the GNOME footprint in lots of places, but actually I have Xfce desktop. (Is that the default desktop for XUbuntu? Is that because it consumes less resources?) So since I have the Xfce, do I have Gnome doing SOMETHING? (If I DON'T have KDE, then there is no good reason to install (?) "their" updates, right?)

Vignesh S, thank you very much for your time and knowledge. I put the results of your first question (?) in my signature. The second is in the screenshot.

I WISH -- I WISH -- I WISH that there was a site that simply states what the acronyms represent. Sometimes I just can't remember (I should probably keep a list myself).

Chris Edgell, its (lowercase l) lspci, not capital I then spci (if that made any sense :-))

As for what that stands for, I have no idea myself :-P. But that command will tell you what hardware (excluding processor and RAM) your computer has.

hmm... Judging by your RAM (the processor is all good at a healthy 2.00GHz), its gonna be hard to get these special effects, especially the shift switcher. Even with my GMA 4500M chip on my laptop (and its by no means old or slow), it jitters a bit. Try typing in lspci (with a lowercase l, not a capital I) into the terminal

I'll try loading up Xubuntu up again and learning some more things about it. I'll see how it goes. This all mainly hinges on the graphics controller, and judging by the fact there is probably a graphics chip in there, it actually might not work.

Just as an example,my old IBM Thinkpad R31 had a 1.06GHz processor and 1GB RAM, but the graphics chip was so crap (I think it was an ancient Intel 915 chip) compiz and all the cool special effects never ended up working on it. Just for the record, I used GNOME on that thing, as I knewso little about Xubuntu and XFCE, and I still do to this day :-).

Getting a RAM upgrade will definitely help you system go a LOT faster. Trust me, on that old IBM bugger I had, it used to have 256MB of RAM, and Ubuntu lagged like hell on it, and when I popped in an extra 512MB chip, it sped up incredibly, and GNOME became usable :-D (ended up going full way and putting another 512MB chip to make it 1GB, but I disgress...)

First we'll see what graphics controller you have, and then we'll be able to tell you if Compiz will like it enough to work.

EDIT: Whoa, do you also have GNOME on your Xubuntu system?

[Sef]

Moved to recurring discussions.

[Chris Edgell]

Hi, Vignesh S

If that is in fact what my System Monitor said, then I DO have GNOME installed, is that true? Why IS that so surprising?

But now, I have taken the initiative to show you just what "programs or applications" I have that are GNOME, and what I have that are Xfce.

I have entered the correct code (would you call it code??) into the terminal as you originally requested. That is the 4th screenshot.

I must say, I have never even thought about speed, I have always thought in terms of space. But now after reading up about RAM I think that it's true that the more full the computer gets, the slower it will go. Yes?

Here we go.....

[Chris Edgell]

I guess I was typing, Sef when that word came down that you'd moved the thread, I was looking all over Absolute Beginner, I couldn't figure out what happened, as I said over there, there is usually the dash along the line and the Forum shows there at the far right. I hope you'll leave my question over there, well, I can always Private Message to Vignesh S and tell him I'm over here. Thanks Sef

[presence1960]

Chris I didn't intend on being hard on you, there is no reason for that. If it came off that way I am sorry!

[Chris Edgell]

How very sweet of you to think to say this to me. It WASN'T bad! It kind of shocked me a bit, in the way my own father used to say something to wake me up. Remember the old commercial, "Thanks, I needed that!" I admit, I hate to call it lazy, but I'll say uninspired or something along those lines. It's like if someone poses a math question, I don't even begin to try to solve...if they look quizzically at me I say, "Oh, you want me to DO the math??!! I basically don't do math unless called upon to do so."


In a column I read by Linus himself, he was talking about Gnome users and basically he said we just want to feed at the table and not do the work. Now, I only say that because when he made his remarks, I recognized my own, well I'll say it, TENDENCY to laziness. LOL (I can't bring myself to call myself lazy.) I believe it was Henry Ford who said, "I never stand when I can sit, I never sit when I can lie down." Now, it depends where you're coming from...he was a extremely busy man and HE needed to take his rest when he could....but that's the opposite advise my Mom would give me! LOL

But I go on and on...
Thanks again

[Vignesh S]

Don't worry, I saved the tab that had this thread open in it, and I just refreshed it. I also got your PM too.

Right, down to business. First off, your graphics chip is an Intel 82845G/GM (either one, they're probably the same thing). Support ended for it around 4 years ago, but apparently, it was discontinued at that time too :-S. But the good news is that it apparently has a "gaming guide" which also says that OpenGL works on it. This effectively means that compiz will probably work on it :-D. But there's only one way to find out for sure: to try it out.

Now I see why you have GNOME stuff there; because the programs depend on GNOME, the dependancies required to get it to work in XFCE are also installed too.

Before we try to get this working, you need to install compiz and compiz-config. And if you would also like transparent window bars with plenty of themes to choose from, you will also need to install emerald. Once you do that let me know. I'm currently working on a solution to this current problem of getting compiz to work nicely in Xubuntu. But there definitely is potential in getting this to work

By the way, when I mean special effects, I'm talking transparent window bars, wobbly windows, the shift switcher, the desktop cube etc. Summed up, if compiz works, then really cool eye-candy effects will work.

[Chris Edgell]

You may have seen that I opened a thread on Absolute Beginners -- it was asking for the range of opinion about whether or not I should Try compiz. I am afraid to take the risk. I just could not stand it if my system froze from overload.

I appreciate your attention.

[Shpongle]

Well unlike vista's window switching feature. Ubuntu (compiz) doesn't have a show desktop entry. I mean you can't cycle over to and entry that is meant to show the desktop. I hope compiz developers will add that feature in future versions.

If you like to have more "neat" desktop functions/effects try installing CompizConfig Settings Manager. You can find it in Synaptic. You can make windows wobble, your desktop burn, turn it to a cube, sphere or cylinder. Beam your windows up etc. Try it its fun.

it actually does ctrl alt d shows the desktop and if you press it again it shows the programss you had open