Compiz

Compiz (formerly Beryl and Compiz Fusion) is a free, portable and open source software project that has been designed from the offset to act as a compositing window manager for GNU/Linux operating systems. It is in charge of the astonishing desktop effects (Cube, Expose, etc.) that you probably saw on the Internet.

Features at a glance

Key features include support for the latest OpenGL library for providing users with top-notch desktop effects, a powerful plugin architecture that can be changed at runtime and allow anyone to easily extend the software’s default functionality.

In addition, Compiz is bundled with a wide range of effects that will impress your friends, colleagues and family, offers increased enjoyment and productivity, as well as a growing and friendly community of users.

As a bonus, the software includes a graphical front-end, called CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM), which allows you to effortlessly tweak Compiz to act the way you want it to act, as well as to manage, enable and disable effects.

Supported desktop environments/window managers

Compiz is a window manager itself, which means that it runs on top of your GNU/Linux distribution without the need of an additional desktop environment or another window manager. However, is can also be deployed on top of various graphical desktop environments, such as GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE/LXQt, and many others.

Under the hood, supported OSes and availability

The software is written in the C, C++ and Python programming language. It is actively developed and distributed as a universal sources archive, allowing the user to optimize it for a specific hardware architecture (32-bit and 64-bit are supported at this time).

At the moment, Compiz is distributed as pre-built binary packages on the main software repositories of numerous distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora and Mageia.

What is new in this release:

• full support for Metacity 3.14 in the gtk-window-decorator
• full support for bi-arch and multi-arch builds
• Use the GL_EXT_x11_sync_object OpenGL extension to synchronize updates with X11 to avoid unrefreshed parts of the screen on Nvidia hardware

What is new in version 0.9.12.0:

• This release contains mostly small bugfixes and some work to move the gtk-window-decorator to GTK+-3.

What is new in version 0.9.7.4:

• It's a bug fix release.

What is new in version 0.9.7.2:

• It's a bug fix release, with some crashes resolved and lots of fixes related to keyboard handling with Unity 5.

What is new in version 0.9.0:

• compiz-core:
• Completely rewritten developer API in C++, using boost and stl to simplify a number of tasks originally handled in core.
• Reworked plugin function hooking system, where the WRAP / UNWRAP macros have been replaced with 'smart' function call chains using real function lists that can have any component turned off at any time to save unneeded CPU cycles
• Rendering framework split into the composite and opengl plugins, the former making compiz a compositing window manager and the latter performing that compositing using OpenGL. Such a split will allow new rendering plugins such as XRender and Clutter to be developed as well as for compiz to run as a non-compositing window manager
• Added copytex plugin, which re-implements part of the 'copy mode' texture binding from Beryl. While this is slower, it allows for textures that are larger than the maximum texture size allowed by the host's OpenGL implementation
• Added decoration reparenting to the decoration plugin. This will allow compiz to run with decorations as a non-compositing window manager. Reparenting support added to both gtk-window-decorator and kde4-window-decorator
• Added KDE Plugin to integrate with the QT main loop and create a KApplication, for further integration into KDE.
• Added compiztoolbox library plugin, allows developers to do tedious but repeated actions in many plugins such as set up the application switcher window and draw thumbnails of window
• Plugins rewritten in C++ using the new API
• DBus plugin now uses the screen number to identify compiz instance. This means that scripts which use /allscreens will no longer work. In general this means that paths have now changed to be /org/freedesktop/compiz/screen{screen_number}/ ... In a single instance of compiz, {screen_number} would generally be 0 (i.e screen0)
• Shape drawing implemented in annotate. Also fixed long standing damage bug that caused skips in line drawing.
• Added serialization interface to core, which allows plugins to save activity states on plugin load/unload and through compiz relaunches. The data is stored in X11 window properties and automatically dropped when relevant X11 resources are destroyed
• plugins-main:
• Rewritten animations interface; supports object oriented animation construction, which should further simplify creating new animations
• Switchers support viewing only icons
• Added support to drag windows to edges and have them fill the adjacent side of the screen
• Plugins rewritten in C++ using the new API
• plugins-extra:
• Added support for automatic wallpaper rotation
• Added edge support to grid plugin so windows can easily be resized by dragging to an edge or corner
• Plugins rewritten in C++ using the new API
• plugins-unsupported:
• Rewritten elements interface - allows definition of elements in an object oriented fashion, easily create new plugins that hook into the existing functionality of the plugin
• Plugins rewritten in C++ using the new API
• ccsm:
• Number of buttons increased to 20
• Fixed bug newer gtk exposed where values were not read before destroying the dialog window resulting in blank entries
• compizconfig-backend-gconf:
• CMake buildsystem
• compizconfig-python:
• Distutils buildsystem
• libcompizconfig:
• CMake buildsystem
• Plugins rewritten in C++ using the new API

What is new in version 0.8.4:

• This release brings two new plugins, translation updates, many bug fixes, improved stability, and better screen resolution change handling. Also included is additional integration work for KDE 4.

What is new in version 0.8.0:

• New plugin "commands" that handles the bindings for arbitrary commands that previously were handled in core. In addition to the previously present key bindings button and edge bindings were added as well.
• New plugin "gnomecompat" which handles bindings that are exclusively used in the Gnome desktop environment and removed the corresponding bindings from core. This change fixes main menu and run dialog bindings for KDE users as those previously were conflicting between compiz and KDE. Gnome users upgrading should make sure to enable this plugin.
• Added support for _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS EWMH hint.
• Added support for reading the icon hint from the WM_HINTS property if _NET_WM_ICON is not available.
• Update Gnome support for Gnome 2.24.
• Added options to scale plugin that allow "toggle type" behaviour for key and button bindings.
• Several memory leak fixes.
• Adjusted gtk-window-decorator for newer libmetacity-private versions.
• Fixed gtk-window-decorator display for RTL languages.
• Adjusted kde4-window-decorator for KDE 4.2 API.
• Large number of minor bug fixes, especially in resize handling and stacking code.
• Translation updates