How to Edit Compiz Settings in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot?

Compiz is an advanced 3D Graphics rendering manager + is one of the first to add the 3D compositing feature to the X-Windows GUI library. After sometime a bit of a rival came called Berryl (a fork of Compiz) but later it was merged back into it thus Compiz the current dominator. But that could change since Gnome Shell uses a one of its own 3D render called Mutter.

Anyhow, you can find a decent amount of GUI tools to edit Compiz settings but for some reason most of the GUI tool can drag you into a bit of a unstable system. And I think the reason is that when you change a setting or two using them, those 1 or 2 settings applies some certain amount of "child" settings inside them which means a lot of changes concerning the 3D rendering engine which leads to the unstable OS, perhaps.

Ubuntu Linux made some serious adaptations of Compiz with the introduction of their Unity desktop module and as almost all knows it has two versions.

Unity 3D: The default version which uses the 3D rendering by default to create a beautiful looking windows, resizing or minimizing effects, etc.

Compiz is useful, somewhat :)...

Unity 2D: This is the non-3D version thus does non rely on Compiz.

Anyhow, the thing is, with Ubuntu 11.04 it was pretty easy to edit advanced settings of Compiz thanks to the Gconf-editor. But since Ubuntu 11.10 uses a lot of Gnome 3/Shell apps + Gnome Shell is migrating from Gconf-editor (a Gnome desktop configuration database editor GUI) to a new tool called Dconf-editor...

... The problems is that, while I was writing this post, Ubuntu is at its Beta 2 stage and I don't know whether things would change when they release it official (don't think so)... neither "Gconf" nor "Dconf" is installed by default in Ubuntu 11.10!.

Enough talking, let's do it!

1. So if you want to edit Compiz settings then you gotta first install Gconf-editor manually in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot (Dconf is pretty new still and won't even include any settings concerning Compiz). To do that use the below command.

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

2. Now, press "Alt" + "F2" keys and put the below command into the search box and hit enter.

gconf-editor

3. This should open a window similar to the below.

Ahh, the good & "old" friend...

Now, since it's not install by default, the first time I ran it it did not let me choose anything (looked like "stuck", errrrrr). But I waited like 15-20 seconds and things worked as expected. I guess it just need time to "import" the settings to its database. A re-boot could be the best solution.


Anyhow, from your left go to: "apps" -> "compiz-1".

That's it. Under "compiz-" -> "plugins", you'll find all of those "hidden" Compiz OpenGL 3D rendering settings such as: animation, blur, composite, cube effects, decor, ezoom, etc.

They're all there! ...

If you messed up things (story of my life! :P) as usual, then open your terminal and enter the below command to restore the values to their original settings.

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1

And if you want to load the desktop with Unity's default settings (user profiles, launcher preferences, etc) then use the below command for that.

unity --reset   

You can also use the below command which gives a short introduction to "Unity-Shell", etc (the command-line manual actually).

man unity

Also remember, since OpenGL 3D graphics rendering means deeper hardware integration thus always make sure that you have the up-to-date GPU drivers installed to get the best out of your system. Good luck.