I like avant-windows-navigator but I can not use it with compiz-fusion as performance in it’s really bad. The most important problems is rendering in applications like firefox or evince, this sort of task eat my cpu. In this sort of programs responsiveness is one of the key features so i dumped compiz-fusion some time ago and 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 resources.

But the other day i changed my settings again for a nice new project called Cairo Composite Manager. From the project page,

Cairo Composite Manager is a versatile and extensible composite manager which use cairo for rendering. Rendering can be done in 2D or 3D, using Xrender and Glitz backends. Plugins can be used to add some cool effects to your desktop.

So here the instructions on how-to install it,

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

add this lines,

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gandalfn/ubuntu gutsy main universe

now exceute,

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install cairo-compmgr

An icon will appear on Applications > System Tools, so try starting it from there.
Now there are some tweaks that you can do, but you will need to test if they work fine for you (for example glitz backend dosen’t work for me)

Glitz backend (default is xrender),

gconftool-2 --set --type=string /apps/cairo-compmgr/screen_0/general/backend "glitz"

This one is quite unstable so rollback if it dosent work,

gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /apps/cairo-compmgr/screen_0/general/native_pixmap_bind true

Finally if you like it and want to run cairo-compmgr every time you login do,

System > Preferences > Sessions , and Add a new entry,

Name: Cairo Composite Manager
Command: /usr/bin/cairo-compmgr

And now some screenshots from the author,

Enjoy!