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I just upgraded to 18.04 and I'm loving the new look but I'm horrified to discover that all of my customizations added by CompizConfig Settings Manager aren't working!

I've tried uninstalling & reinstalling compizconfig-settings-manager, and moving the ~/.compiz folder to try to get it to reset, but that's not helping. It's clearly not that it's lost my settings so much as that it's not connected to whatever it's supposed to affect.

e.g. if I reset the settings and then try turning on Firepaint just as a test, nothing happens when I press the Firepaint shortcut..

I'm about to try restarting (now that I've uninstalled & reinstalled ccsm) to see if that helps. UPDATE: Restarting didn't help.

MalcolmOcean
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  • Gnome Shell replaced Unity in 18.04 as the default desktop and Gnome Shell doesn't use Compiz. See my answer below to install Unity to get Compiz up and running. – mchid Feb 10 '19 at 22:40

1 Answers1

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Before you begin, please enable the Universe repository.

Unfortunately, 18.04 uses Gnome Shell instead of Unity and so Compiz doesn't work.

Fortunately, you can install the old Unity based Ubuntu desktop by running the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop unity-session unity-greeter

This will also install a lightdm session manager which will give you the more familiar login experience. When prompted, select lightdm from the list of session managers to replace the now default gdm session manager.

If you do not see that option, please run the following command to switch to lightdm:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

and then select lightdm when prompted.

For a full list of additional packages like unity scopes and lenses, run the following command:

apt-cache search unity | grep -P '^unity'

Now, reboot and make sure to select the Unity session by clicking on the icon to the left of the login box when you log back in.

After you log back in, the CompizConfig Session Manager will work just like it used to.

mchid
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  • "Unable to locate package session" As far as I know, I've enabled the Universe repository... – MalcolmOcean Feb 10 '19 at 22:44
  • Yeah, main, universe, restricted, & multiverse are all enabled. – MalcolmOcean Feb 10 '19 at 22:44
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    It looks like maybe you meant unity-session (with a hyphen). At any rate, both unity-session and unity-greeter are "already the newest version". – MalcolmOcean Feb 10 '19 at 22:49
  • Hm, based on https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-unity-desktop-on-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-linux I've tried installing ubuntu-unity-desktop but nothing happened after I did. – MalcolmOcean Feb 10 '19 at 22:52
  • Just ran sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 and it looks like I've now been able to select lightdm, and when I rebooted I selected Unity instead of the other options (like that link suggested). – MalcolmOcean Feb 10 '19 at 23:05
  • @MalcolmOcean Yes, that was a typo and I forgot the hyphen and I edited the answer to reflect the changes. Does it work now? It should work. – mchid Feb 11 '19 at 00:58
  • @DKBose I have ccsm and extras package installed just like in 16.04 and I don't see anything missing at all. Which special effects are you referring to? – mchid Feb 11 '19 at 05:05
  • @DKBose Cool, thanks! I haven't looked at some of the old effects that I never used like the rain and fire so there might be stuff missing and I would never know. Also, I have compiz compiz-core compiz-gnome compiz-plugins compiz-plugins-default compiz-plugins-extra compiz-plugins-main compizconfig-settings-manager libcompizconfig0 python-compizconfig installed. Compiz Cube and all the main stuff seems fine though. – mchid Feb 11 '19 at 05:10
  • See Known Issues in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compiz. It seems that to have "complete OpenGL ES support" some features were dropped but that link also mentions that missing features will be added if possible. More here: https://launchpad.net/compiz/0.9.8/0.9.8.0. – DK Bose Feb 11 '19 at 05:24
  • @DKBose Yes, I tried running Compiz, Unity, and CCSM on Arch a few years ago and a whole bunch of stuff was missing and didn't work and it was super buggy. However, it still runs great on 18.04 Ubuntu. I heard that Compiz was depreciated a few years back when Gnome stopped using Metacity and that the Ubuntu developers had forked the original Compiz project or something like that. – mchid Feb 11 '19 at 05:32
  • The Launchpad link has information that isn't specific to Arch Linux, AFAICT. – DK Bose Feb 11 '19 at 05:37
  • @DKBose Yeah, that version you have linked is from 2012 and that was when users started to have to install the extra plugin packages to get stuff like compiz cube to work. This was also about the same time that Gnome dropped Metacity and Compiz. Compiz has been this way since Unity 12.04 so 18.04 works just like it used to on version 16.04. In fact, there have been many effects and features added since that 2012 version came out. – mchid Feb 11 '19 at 05:50