Installing compiz-fusion and Emerald on Ubuntu

Compiz is already installed on Ubuntu. What we are going to do is to install a settings manager that will provide a huge amount of options to transform your linux into an eye candy.

Our Objective:



Fusion-icon installation:

This this application you can activate lots of effects such as the "Desktop cube" and window decorations.

To do this, open a terminal (applications -> accesories -> terminal)

Type "sudo apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-extra fusion-icon"

Then type "fusion-icon" and yuo will see a small blue cube appearing at the notification bar. Right click it, and you will be able to choose your new effects by choosing "settings manager".

Note that in order to be able to use the Desktop Cube you need to have 4 workspaces. To do this, you need to right click the squares at the bottom right of the screen and choose 4 rows.

Now press Ctrl + Alt + Left Click, move the mouse and behold, the Desktop Cube.

Emerald Installation:

Emerald is a very nice window decorator. It supports transparencies, animations and even you can create them and modify them.

To install Emerald type in a terminal "sudo apt-get install emerald"

Now select "fusion-icon -> reset window manager" (fusion-icon is the blue cube at the notification bar)

To install emerald themes emerald themes, you can go to www.gnome-looks.org and you can choose any kind of file that has the .emerald extention (an example "newtheme.emerald" ), i chose http://sen7.deviantart.com/art/Mira-100077120.

Extract the files to a folder, click "fusion-icon -> emerald theme manager" choose "import" to select the theme, select the file that has the ".emerald" extension (in this case at the folder named "MiraV2") and you can now select the theme by double clicking it.

To see the new theme select "fusion-icon -> select window decorator -> emerald"

Automatic startup:

To start fusion-icon when you start Ubuntu, go to "settings -> preferences -> startup applications" add a new startup program and put in the fields "fusion-icon"

Now the OS is starting nice. But we can make it even better! Stay tuned!