Touch Screen plus Compiz!

This is just a nifty video of someone using a touch screen with the 3d effects of compiz fusion or maybe older beryl:

Metacity now with Built in Composite!

I just read this great blog entry about how metacity is finally startign to get onto the composite bandwagon. Anywho you can download the the metacity svn and configure it for composite. So what does this mean? omposite for a lower price on cpu power. Basicly you dont need to run Compiz Fusion or xcompmgr to use awn or screenlets or any other composite needy program. While xcompmgr is also on the lite end compared to compiz fusion, I believe development has been stopped on it. So far I have tried it out and it has been pretty nice and fast, and also they seemed to have made the minimization a little more snazzier but not the maximization... anywho if you want to check it out instructions can be found on this blog post.

Almost have desktop effects workign in Gutsy...

So I have been tryign to get them to work, and I have done kind of a work around, but it seems to allow me to turn on compiz fusion. But I am not getting any window boarders or animations for that matter, its like only composite is working. Heres my output while using the fusion-icon to start it:

mike@mike-desktop:~$ fusion-icon
* Detected Session: gnome
* Searching for installed applications...
Backend : ini
Integration : true
Profile : default
Adding plugin decoration (decoration)
Initializing decoration options...done
* NVIDIA on Xorg detected, exporting: __GL_YIELD=NOTHING
* Using the GTK Interface
* Starting Compiz
... executing: compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp --loose-binding --indirect-rendering
compiz (core) - Error: Couldn't load plugin 'ccp'

The Snazzy Way to Logout of Linux

There is this fairly new program called Closure. It's not brand new but I have only seen it mentioned and talked about on the AWN Forum. Closure to be used does need a composite manager, so you will need to be using; compmgr, beryl, compiz or the new Compiz Fusion. Ok now back to Closure. Before I go into Closure I will dazzle your eyes with a screen shot of it:


As you can see it looks pretty smooth. As for features Closure really doesn't do a whole lot, but what it does it does well. Basically when Closure is just an updated look for the log out menu. AS you can probably see in the screen shot above, Closure will; Lock, reboot, and Shutdown. Also there is a small elegant x out button just in case you brought up Closure to log out but then decide not to. Closure is not very complicated to use and is super simple and easy to set up. Its a nice quick way to give an updated look to your computer. Just compare Closures looks to the "normal" way someone would log out of gnome on Ubuntu:

(I will try and get the picture back, Unfortunately someone changed it to a bad picture....)

Now doesn't Closure look much slicker then that? You bet it does, so now your probably asking how can I get this nifty little program? Well I will tell ya. So lets open up a terminal and grab the SVN for Closure:

svn checkout http://closure.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ closure

Now cd into the directory that was created by the SVN and and in terminal run:

./autogen

make

sudo make install

Now If you had no errors you should be able to run closure with the command:

closure

Closure will also be in your application menu if you want a desktop icon, or it even looks very nice on AWN. If for some reason you are having trouble get help in this forum thread. Also if you want Closure is hosted on Google Code here. Closure seems to be in very active development so stay tuned for updates. I will post updates here on my blog but you can also see them in that forum post I mentioned before.