Metacity beats compiz-fusion :P
Yes! guys and gals, our beloved window manager is kicking ass in composite land. There’s a new branch on metacity subversion were developers are working on composite features for metacity. So far we have, transparency, shadow and ALT+tab Godness, and now that I’m running a composite WM i can use the nice MAC OS X like dock bar, AWN. All this without the lag (and CPU masacre) introduced in compiz-fusion when scrolling applications.
If you want to install the development branch you can do it this way, first check out the code form gnome subversion,
svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/metacity/branches/iains-blingtastic-bucket-o-bling/ metacity
(you will need subversion package for this, if you don’t have it just, sudo apt-get install subversion)
then change to the metacity dir and for the next steps you will need some libraries so install the following packages,
sudo apt-get install gnome-common build-essential autoconf gnome-devel libtool
(hmm…I’m probably missing something….)
cd metacity
/bin/bash autogen.sh
./configure --enable-compositor
make
Now go and edit the following this key /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager,
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager true
Now you can dotwo things, one just test it
./src/metacity --replace
And the second one is run a make install to install it system wide, but this is totally optional.
If you want to run it at start up, you just need to modify the key on /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager
And i could finish the post here, but you will kill me if i dont show a screenshot :P, so here it’s
UPDATE: This branch was merged in trunk and it’s now deprecated, you should download the code from there now.
someone wrote:
Well, this isn’t true. I tried this new SVN Metacity and all I can say is it’s nothing compared to Compiz-Fusion. Scrolling lags just like with Compiz and there’s a horrible lag when moving windows.
Posted on 05-Dec-07 at 8:11 pm | Permalink
stefan wrote:
To sad that this will not work in my virtual machine :/
Posted on 05-Dec-07 at 11:04 pm | Permalink
SearchRoads » starfire from the teen titans Metacity beats compiz-fusion wrote:
[...] from the teen titans Check out the new development on metacity code! ravens teen titansread more | digg [...]
Posted on 05-Dec-07 at 11:31 pm | Permalink
gus wrote:
@stefan
With the information in the post you can try it without installing it, everything will remain on the directory where source was downloaded…
(before doing this you should wipe windows
Posted on 05-Dec-07 at 11:54 pm | Permalink
Jacob wrote:
The only thing I really care about is panels getting true transparency. Other than that, compiz works for me.
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 4:39 am | Permalink
Hank wrote:
If your computer can’t handle compiz, it’s not worth it anyway. Metacity will never even come close to competing.
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 4:44 am | Permalink
Nate wrote:
It’s not ‘competing’. That’s what the
is ment for. It’s called a ‘joke’.
The thing is is that Metacity is designed for simplicity. It’s a minimal Window manager with sane defaults. It’s designed for people that don’t want to spend their evenings configuring window managers or dealing with configuring half-finished or conflicting functionality.
Through it’s history Gnome has learned that overly-complex Window managers are difficult for users to deal with. Originally Gnome used Sawfish, which still surpasses Compiz in a lot of geeky ways, but it’s to much. Most people don’t want to deal with it.
So Metacity’s design goals are basicly to ‘just work’ and ’stay out of the way’.
Functionality in Metacity is backed up with standards. The ICCCM and EWMH are to standards for Window managers that allow third party scripting tools like wmctrl or devilspy to work with Metacity. Also those standards are what allows you to successfully run other Windows Managers like OpenBox or Compiz with a simple –replace command line switch in Gnome.
So Metacity has it’s place as the default WM. Compiz is used for bling and other WM’s have their advantages. Everybody wins.
And remember composited desktops have features that go beyond bling. With good drivers they have superior performance over regular WMs. The composited desktop makes running X over networks work better. That sort of thing.
Personally I tried Metacity’s compositing features a few months ago and was dissapointed that they didn’t work. Hopefully this fixes it.
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 8:29 am | Permalink
gus wrote:
I only really use one or two effects of compiz, like expose, alt+tab with previews and zoom. The fact that metacity is a simple wm and was made to ‘just work’ doesn’t stop the developers from developing a simple composite engine with a plugin interface that let the community decide which are the important and useful features that they would like to add.
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 9:59 am | Permalink
Metacity beats compiz-fusion | {buhay sysad} wrote:
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 10:33 pm | Permalink
Conversas do Bruno | KWin e Metacity apresentam efeitos eye-candy wrote:
[...] Efeitos do KWin Efeitos do Metacity [...]
Posted on 07-Dec-07 at 1:47 am | Permalink
Usando o novo metacity no GNOME. « Hamacker’s Palace wrote:
[...] Se estiver disposto em instalar, colocarei aqui os passos que foram descritos em http://dagus.org/2007/11/28/metacity-beats-compiz-fusion-p/. [...]
Posted on 07-Dec-07 at 2:03 pm | Permalink
freshi wrote:
Great, thanks! I’ve got some troubles with compiz and my ATI card and this solution gives me exactly what I want… No wobbly windows, cubes and stuff - just some nice shadows which makes the desktop much clearer a nice looking task switcher and last but not least a working solution!
Posted on 03-Jan-08 at 9:09 am | Permalink
dagus.org » Improved composite performance (without compiz) wrote:
[...] got back to the plain old metacity till I found that a composite manager was being developed inside metacity. It worked good (better than compiz-fusion) but still eats some additional [...]
Posted on 09-Feb-08 at 5:24 pm | Permalink
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Posted on 10-Feb-08 at 10:57 am | Permalink
Hypnogogic » Tumble » Links du jour wrote:
[...] dagus.org » Metacity beats compiz-fusion [...]
Posted on 22-Feb-08 at 1:08 am | Permalink