OK, My system is a Dell 6400 lappy and I installed Hardy Heron,with an ATI 1400 video card. Of course I cannot have Visual effects of Normal or special because of the screen savers that use OpenGL start flickering black and Google Earth crashes. If I disable special effects, then screen savers and Google Earth works fine. Here is a temporary workaround until found where the problem lies. Use Synaptic manager and download the fusion-icon . When synaptics is done it will place the icon on your Applications-System Tools and it will be called Compiz Fusion Icon. What this icon will do is put the icon in your system tray and you can right click on the icon to change your windows manager. When you have the icon in your system tray do this for each.

Windows manager:

Compiz: you have special effects but cannot run OpenGl programs or screen savers.

Metacity: Bring the special effects down to none, but you can run OpenGl programs like screen savers and Google Earth.

I am a linux newbie and will just stick with metacity for my tastes, but for anyone who wants their Compiz and to be able to switch back and forth quickly, well here it is.