These are some instructions on installing compiz-fusion on Kubuntu gutsy. Since Ubuntu comes with compiz it works great out of the box. But Kubuntu does not come with compiz-fusion installed. The reason is it was made to work with the Gnome desktop and not with the KDE desktop. Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop so the intergration of compiz is great. Below is what I had to do to get compiz-fusion working with my install of Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy on a Dell Inspiron 9300 with an Nvidia GeForce Go 6800. I have the proprietary (restricted) Nvidia drivers installed. So, if you don't have an Nvidia card installed with the restricted drivers the nvidia specific setup stuff is not going to work for you.
First thing to do is login to a desktop and pull up a terminal. Now let's install the packages we will need. The line to do that is below.
sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager emerald
After that installs you need to test if it worked by opening another shell and typing the following:
compiz --replace
This should flash the screen and give you your windows back. If you do not have your window manager (the border around your windows) then you might need to turn on Nvidia 24bit argb-glx-visuals. To do this execute the following:
sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24
Now just log out of KDE and when you get to the login screen hit the CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE keys together to restart your X server. After that log back in to kde.
If the screen flashes and you have your window manager running then compiz should be running. If it's not then you can run it by hand again from the command line using the compiz --replace line we used above. When I ran it from the command line I logged out of KDE and logged back in. KDE automatically started it for me because I had it running when I logged out.
If it will not do this for you fear not. You can just put a script in your ~/.kde/Autostart dir. To do this execute the following command from the command prompt:
echo "compiz --replace" > ~/.kde/Autostart/startcompiz.sh;chmod +x ~/.kde/Autostart/startcompiz.sh
This should start compiz every time you start KDE.
Now onto settings. To get to the compiz configuration settings go to KMenu->Settings->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. In here you can turn on/off and configure all of the compiz plugins. The command ccsm will also bring this up.
When I turned on "Rotate Cube" and "Desktop Cube" I was only getting a flat plane with 2 sides. No Cube. After some searching I figured out what was wrong. To get the desktop cube to display 4 sides go into the "General" category. Then "General Options" under the "Desktop Size" tab make the "Horzintal Virtual Size" slider 4 to get a 4 sided cube. Spin the cube by holding down both the right and left mouse buttons and moving the mouse left and right. Fun!
I did run into a problem or two. If your window manager dies (you loose your bar at the top of your windows) then you can start it back up with the following command:
emerald --replace &
If you want your old window manager back you can try:
kwin --replace
