Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Easy install/updates for Compiz Fusion

The average Linux user, most likely does not compile Compiz Fusion from git themselves. I am sure most of you use a repo or deb, or something similar for your other distributions. Well if you like me you want the latest and greatest and repos sometimes aren't that fast for updates. Well over in the Ubuntu forums I came across an amazing little script. It will download and install the latest Compiz Fusion, and update your existing Compiz Fusion every time you run it.

Now for a super quick review of the actual script, its fairly simple to use, just download it and run it in terminal. Then you will have to answer some question here and there and it pretty much does all the hard stuff. I will say some of the questions toward the end on what it it should install I was a little confused on, but I must have picked the right answers cause Compiz Fusion is working great!

One note when installing definitely choose yes for weather or not you want to install Compiz Fusion Icon. This is very nice, and gives you an easy way to start and manage Compiz Fusion. With this installed it will allow you to start Compiz Fusion my navigating to your, Applications>System Tools>Compiz Fusion Icon. Once that is run COmpiz Fusion will start and then a Compiz Fusion Icon will appear in your notification area. Upon clickign this icon you have many useful things right at your fingertips. Such as, Compiz Settings Manager, Emerald Manager, Select Window Manager, Compiz Options (Lets you select Loose bindings and or indirect rendering), and lastly a place to select your window decorator.

Now after hearing all that you probably are like "Give me this Script!" So I will give you a link to where I found it here. Just a note before you follow those directions you may want to remove your existing compiz fusion first, thats at least what I did....Have Fun!

update:

Also the author of the script mentioned Compiz Fusion would probably work smoother/faster if you compiled it yourself this way, but I didn't really believe it when I first read it. But ever Since I tried it Compiz Fusion has been running super smooth and fast. Maybe you wouldn't notice it on a nice high end computer, But on my slow desktop I sure as hell notice a difference. So If you try this please post a comment sharing you thoughts on this...