Making EVERYTHING of Compiz + Emerald work on Xubuntu 11.04

[3 frags left]

Protip: This tutorial also works on Kubuntu, Lubuntu or whatever Ubuntu distro you want. The only difference will be in the part where it mentions the default window manager of Xubuntu; replace it with the window manager of your distro.

I heard from many linuxers that one of the main reasons they did not use Xubuntu 11.04 was the impossibility of installing the beautiful, beautiful Compiz interface due to compatibility issues. After a lot of research, I finally did, and this is how I did it.

"Meh, Compiz is just eye candy, why would I install it, it's a waste of time!"
Besides the gorgeous eye candy, Compiz makes your system much faster in general. Just check the sidebar @ the screenshots.

"INB4 CRASHING SYSTEM"
I guarantee this will work. IF, and only if this doesn't work, you can restore things like they previously were by pressing Alt+F2 and typing xfwm4 --replace. This will reset Xubuntu's original windows decorator.

So, let's get started, shall we?
First of all, if you have attempted to install emerald, remove it. For some reason, the package in the repository does not work. I'm pretty sure they are doing their best to solve this, but meanwhile we will have to use another way. Remove purge emerald and its dependencies.

sudo apt-get remove --purge emerald libdecoration-0dev

Good. Now, using a fix I borrowed from this blog, we'll install a few packages we need, as well as using git repositories. You might save this as a script if you wish, or copy & paste everything. PROTIP: To paste a line in a terminal session, use Ctrl+Shift+V.

sudo apt-get -y install libtool build-essential intltool libdecoration0-dev libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libwnck-dev
#Install git and autoconf too if you don't have it
sudo apt-get install git autoconf
cd ~
git clone git://anongit.compiz.org/fusion/decorators/emerald
cd emerald
git checkout -b compiz++ origin/compiz++
./autogen.sh
make
make install
cd ~
rm -rf emerald

Once this is done, Emerald THeme Manager should be at your menu. Go check it under Settings.

Now it's Compiz's turn. You can get it with no trouble through regular means.

sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-plugins-extra compiz-plugins-main compizconfig-settings-manager

Once that's done, now it's time to go to CompizConfig Settings Manager in Settings menu. Before starting Compiz up, set emerald as Compiz's default window manager. Select the Effects category, enable Window Decorator and get into its options. In the command, place emerald --replace.

Now onto the testing part! Press Alt+F2 and type compiz --replace. Emerald will automatically take the scene. Oh, do I need to remind you that first you need to install a theme to manage it? Get some here. I personally recommend Gallygan, it's the one I'm using at the screenshots.

Bang! Compiz oughta be working, so now we must add it to startup, right? Go to [i]Settings > Settings Manager > Session and Startup[i]. Select Application Autostart tab and click Add button. Name it Compiz Startup, and type compiz --replace in the command line.

"What about the cube?"
11.04 has decided to be nasty with this conflict between Desktop Wall and the Cube. OMG! Ubuntu made a pretty good post about it, follow it to the letter and it will work properly.

Check out a few screenshots of my PC with the ultimate eye candy:




Credits:
www.demonoid.cc
www.omgubuntu.com.uk

Edit: dballanc reminded me of something I forgot... you must add the packages libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libwnck-dev if you are installing Xubuntu from scratch. Otherwise, it won't configure. Thanks, bud!
Edit 2: Another typo fixed... sorry for that! Thanks jclmusic! Typos happen...

[dballanc]

The above steps were not enough coming from a default xubuntu 11.04 install. There were a couple of other dev packs to install before the autogen.sh script would complete without errors:

sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libwnck-dev


After that everything worked perfectly. Thanks! I think this really improves the appeal of xfce.

[3 frags left]

Oh, I forgot that little detail! I'm editing that into the tutorial right away. Thank you!

[jclmusic]

Small thing, but shouldn't that last code block be:

 sudo apt-get install ...

[3 frags left]

Whoops! What a lack of attention of mine! Thank you and sorry for that.

[geazzy]

great tips..
but I use unity

[Deadmode]

bleehhhhh... I decided not to go with emerald + compiz after I went through this, but I can't get rid of emerald theme manager out of my system > preferences menu.

sudo apt-get remove emerald

gives me

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package emerald is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 94 not upgraded.

What do I need to do to just remove all traces of emerald?

[3 frags left]

bleehhhhh... I decided not to go with emerald + compiz after I went through this, but I can't get rid of emerald theme manager out of my system > preferences menu.

sudo apt-get remove emerald

gives me

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package emerald is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 94 not upgraded.

What do I need to do to just remove all traces of emerald?

Since you did not use the PPA Repo version, you must uninstall it from the same folder you installed it. Go to the emerald folder with all the files you downloaded and type sudo make uninstall. That should do the trick.

But I don't get it, didn't you like the result? What happened?

[Deadmode]

Since you did not use the PPA Repo version, you must uninstall it from the same folder you installed it. Go to the emerald folder with all the files you downloaded and type sudo make uninstall. That should do the trick.

But I don't get it, didn't you like the result? What happened?

Thanks, I figured it was probably something like this.

[helicase]

Thanks! I've got it working now, although emerald complained at first about not finding libemeraldengine.so.0 Linking to /usr/local/lib/libemeraldengine.so.0 from /usr/lib solved the problem.