Sharing some minor tips - Mint 11

[tpprynn]

I was glad I wasn't either imagining things or had found I'd just bought a dud netbook when I read that Compiz is behaving oddly. No shadows and fades at all looks a bit basic so I tried Mutter, installed that and added

mutter --replace

to the startup programs and it's fine, smooth even on an Atom-powered netbook (Packard Bell Dot S 410). As basic a remedy as this is I thought I'd share it...

I also replaced the gtk 'controls' in the theme with ClearlooksClassic (with a couple of my tweaks to remove roundness and the blue tab blob) but made it the same colour scheme, using the same border and it's more satisfying I think, bug-free. Lastly, I made Merlwiz's leaf/sphere avatar the menu icon - this should be the logo in my opinion!

Nice edition, thanks from a user since 2008 if anyone at Mint is reading.

[dawgdoc]

Pranaone posted this thread HOW TO DOWNGRADE TO COMPIZ 0.8.6 IN LINUXMINT 11 It seems to be based on this article from Webupd8, which starts off with

If you're using Ubuntu 11.04 with the classic Ubuntu desktop (no Unity), you've probably noticed that not all Compiz plugins work as they used to in Ubuntu 10.10 and changing some of the default Compiz settings results in quite a few bugs. This can be solved by downgrading Compiz to version 0.8.6 (Compiz from Ubuntu 10.10).

[karashata]

I have to +1 to the above. After downgrading Compiz a lot of the bugs aren't a problem anymore. It would seem that the Compiz code rewrite (anything newer than 0.8.6) introduced a lot of bugs that need squashing. 0.8.6 is nice and stable, though a few of the features added to the newer version (like the auto-resizing similar to Win 7's Snap feature) aren't available in the older version.

Of course, it's ultimately a matter of preference, if you like Mutter then you're welcome to stick with it. Metacity also can do compositing, you just need to enable it from the Desktop settings applet. (I believe the setting is called "Use Gnome compositing" or some such under the Windows section of the applet... I don't have access to Katya right this moment and my LMDE is using GNOME 3, which has a completely different Control Center.)

[tpprynn]

Belated thanks for that link - I have done it in the end after a few days of Mutter and a few of Debian with Gnome compositing. I'm finding my mere netbook super-smooth now, possibly moreso than Mint 9 was. Once Compiz is rolled back, the overlay scrollbars are removed and the resize handles are gone this current distro really is very presentable isn't it. Maybe the iso should be remastered with the downgrade in place, like with Pinguy.

[DarkRubySage]

Would you share these tweaks?

[tpprynn]

I haven't been able to get onto the Mint website for two days, maybe server trouble again. Anyway, there's a couple of things in the attachment that might be of use. I'm not making big claims for my tweaks, I know the hard work's been done, but using these bits has enabled me to stop faffing with buggy or garish themes.

In the folder the file names used need changing but I've named them to identify them. 'one' and 'two' are clearlooks gtk files, the first being the one I used with the Mint X border and colour scheme instead of the full Mint X theme. Both splice in aspects of the Murrine and Nodoka theme engines (the latter is in Synaptic) to get rid of some things that annoyed me in the originals. The second is what I use now, similar but with an added black menubar. In Ubuntu 9.04 they had a nice border, Dust, which they then improved so that it looked worse. The contents of 'tweaked dust border' can be pasted over the Dust Metacity border as downloaded to get the old look and fit nicely with the gtk file 'two'. I know there are smoother ways to do these things but I've downloaded a few hundred themes which clearly took a lot of time and skill that I don't have, but hurt your eyes still... Included here also are the two gtkrc-2.0 files I use (which once renamed go in the Home folder), one merely gets rid of ugly panel handles and the other makes for white text on a dark panel like the Dust one included (see pic) which I've made from a cropped screenshot of the Dust border. Apologies to anyone who prefers elaborate (but buggy) pixmap themes, I don't want to waste your time, but someone requested these bits so I've obliged.

Note: the contents of 'one' and 'two' are best pasted over /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtkrc-2.0/gtkrc and usr/themes/ClearlooksClassic/gtkrc-2.0/gtkrc

[phredbull]

For some reason, Compiz is working fine for me OOTB, (with the exception of a few plugins, which has always been the case with my old vid card).

How is Mutter compared to Compiz in terms of functionality? Is it as limited as Metacity or XFCE, (simple shadows and transparency), or does it add window management functionality like Compiz?