HOWTO: Compiz Fusion in Fedora 8 'Werewolf'

Fedora 8 'Werewolf' is just around the corner HERE!!. Lets get this started!

This guide applies for Fedora 9 'Sulphur' too

CCSM should be in the updates repository already. If it havent, take it here　ccsm-0.6.0-3.fc8.noarch.rpm

NOTE: This howto assumes that compiz is already able to run on you hardware. If not, you might google for howto for that first. For NVidia users, install the Livna repositories an yum for kmod-nvidia and reboot. For ATI users, if your card is older than Radeon 9600, it should work out-of-the-box, if not, you will need to wait until ATI releases a new driver for kernel 2.6.23 and yum for kmod-fglrx from Livna after it has been released. Intel user (like me) cheer to yourself as it works out-of-the-box.

Compiz & Compiz Fusion in Fedora 8

Fedora 8 includes Compiz 0.6.2 on its release. However, Compiz Fusion packages are not included together in the default installation due to several reasons (one of it was libcompizconfig, ccsm, compizconfig-python packages got approved quite late) . Nevertheless, Compiz Fusion components are all available in the repositories and you can install it easily (though some work had to be done manually if you want to configure compiz using CCSM and start it properly on boot)

Getting the core bits

First, you will need to get the compiz-fusion plugins installed in your computer. The packages can be acquired easily through YUM.

yum install compiz-fusion compiz-fusion-extras

If you are using GNOME and would want to use a desktop-specific tool to configure compiz, you might want to install the GConf schemas from the -gnome packages

yum install compiz-fusion-gnome compiz-fusion-extras-gnome

With those packages installed, you now basically have Compiz Fusion in your computer and you can use the plugins if you know how to enable them. Compiz in Fedora, however, uses 'glib gconf' as its configuration backend, therefore, if you want to enable the plugins, you will had to run gconf-editor and edit the plugins configurations manually there.

Installing & configuring Compiz to use Libcompizconfig

CCSM is an easy to use configurator for Compiz by the Compiz Fusion project. However, if you want to make use of CCSM, you will need to configure compiz to make use of Libcompizconfig configuration backend instead of the desktop-specific GConf backend.

First, install libcompizconfig, ccsm and the launcher for compiz called compiz-manager. Compiz-manager is a launcher for compiz which will load compiz with 'ccp' plugin if libcompizconfig is installed in a computer, and will load 'glib gconf' if its not.

yum install libcompizconfig ccsm compiz-manager

Now, start compiz using compiz-manager
compiz-manager

Compiz is now ready to be use with CCSM. You can launch CCSM at System > Preferences > Look and Feel > CompizConfig Settings Manager.

Setting up compiz to run on startup

Add compiz-manager into your startup applications list. For GNOME users, System > Preferences > Personal > Sessions > Startup Programs.

P/s: Another method for GNOME is below, but i think this way is ugly and will require redo with every update of gnome-session package.

For GNOME users, first, enable compiz through the desktop-effects utility at System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Desktop Effects.

Then, edit /usr/bin/gnome-wm, scroll down until you find a line that looks like this

OPT3=glib
OPT4=gconf

Change those two lines to

OPT3=ccp
OPT4=""

Logout.

After you login back to your session, compiz is now loaded with 'ccp' at startup instead of 'glib gconf'. So you can use Compiz Fusion with ease.

For KDE users, I don't have any KDE installation around so I am not really sure what to do. Anyway, just add compiz-manager in the startup application list, and I believe that is enough to get it working.


Update: Fusion icon is now in Fedora repository,
yum install fusion-icon-gtk
or
yum install fusion-icon-qt
to get it

Update 2008/05/15: Another way to set compiz-fusion to start on boot
Just run this as user.

gconftool-2 --set --type string \
    /apps/gnome-session/rh/window_manager \
    "compiz --indirect-rendering ccp"

Enjoy!!

- Izhar Firdaus -