Erwann Chénedé's Weblog

Thanks to Albert's port, updated version of compiz and compiz-fusion are available in the spec-file-extra repository :)

You'll find below a new easy install bundle of compiz 0.6.2, compiz-fusion 0.6.2 and emerald 0.5.2 for Solaris build 75a (and later) based distro.

You can check if this release will work on your machine by running my little check up script. You can either downloading it or
run this from a terminal :

/usr/sfw/bin/wget -O - http://www.gnome.org/~erwannc/compiz/compiz-0.6.2-on-solaris-check.perl | /usr/bin/perl 

You can then download and run my install script.

This new release doesn't include many new visible changes in term of plugins or configuration tools. See release notes for compiz & compiz fusion for details.

But new packages have been added to the bundle :
- fusion-icon : It's a little app that sites in the gnome panel tray that allow you to easily change window manager and window decorator. Also allows to access the various configurations tools.
- emerald : It's a custom window decorator. More details can be found here.

Once the install and configuration is finished you can start compiz via Applications>System Tools>Compiz Fusion Icon. This will start start compiz and add a compiz fusion icon in the tray area of the panel

You can then select which window manager and which window decorator you want to use easily.
 

NOTE : I found this app a buggy. So you can still use the start-compiz and stop-compiz command line tool. also note that you need /usr/sbin in your path to run fusion-icon.
(update 9/11/07 I've ported fusion-icon to solaris all features are working as expected now)
you can also change window decorator from the command line when compiz is running by using either gtk-window-decorator --replace or emerald --replace.

Enjoy :)

Next step proper gnome integration on Solaris... 

The opencomposting guys put together a very nice documentation wiki about compiz-fusion.

Detailed information about the different categories of plugins namely main, extra, unsupported is available.

Documentation about the new compizconfig settings manager is available too.

Compiz 0.5.2 and compiz fusion 0.5.2 are now available as a one step install script for solaris x86.

Compiz fusion is the result of the compiz-beryl merge. It includes all the extra plugins available for 0.5.0 plus many many more !

This youtube video shows the major new plugins : 

Compiz fusion also delivered a more flexible and more robust settings manager called CompizConfig Settings Manager.

As DRI enabled intel drivers were delivered in Solaris build 70. Compiz is now working on both nvidia and intel. ATI drivers should be available soon too :)

Can I run it on my machine ?

To check that you're system can run compiz you can use my hardware check script.

you can also run it by pasting the following command line in a terminal :

/usr/sfw/bin/wget -O - http://www.gnome.org/~erwannc/compiz/compiz-on-solaris-check.perl | /usr/bin/perl

How do I install it ?

just download the install script and run it.
It will :
- check you have the right hardware
- remove the previous version of compiz installed on the machine
- install the new packages
- modify you X server configuration file

then logout and back in JDS and click on the "Run Compiz 3D deskop" icon.

To enable and changes plugins behavior run preferences -> CompizConfig Settings Manager or ccsm from the command line.

If you have problems with the install script you can also just extract the solaris packages from the script by supplying the -x argument.

Notes:
I didn't have access to any intel machine running Opensolaris b70 locally in Grenoble. So I'm not promising the xorg.conf modifications will
work out of the box. email me if you have problems, I'll rev up my install script :)

If you had compiz 0.5.0 installed on your machine previously you'll need to reset the gconf settings for each user.
you the following command as the user : gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz
otherwise compiz is likely to fail as plugin names and settings have changed.

How do I use it ?

Here are few tips :
- workspace expo mode : move the mouse at the top left corner of the screen
- expo mode : move the mouse at the top right corner of the screen
- cube : ctrl + alt  :
                            + mouse button 1 for the spinning cube with reflection
                            + left or right arrow to which workspace
                            + down arrow for workspace expo mode
- switcher : Diamond (or windows key) + Tab  to which window
- water ripple : shift + F9 to start and stop
- snow : Diamond (or windows key) + F3 to start and stop
- fire paint (!!) :  shift + Diamond (or windows key) + mouse button 1 to start
                         shift + Diamond (or windows key) + c to clean up

More generally to figure out the keybindings for each plugin run CompizConfig Settings Manager and check the Actions tab.

Where are the sources, how do I compile it ?

The spec files sources can be found as usual in spec-file-extra. The compile order is the following :
SFEsed
SFEcompiz
SFElibcompizconfig
SFEcompizconfig-gconf
SFEcompizconfig-python
SFElibsexy
SFEsexy-python
SFEccsm
SFEcompiz-bcop
SFEgetopt
SFEcompiz-fusion-main
SFEcompiz-fusion-extra
SFEcompiz-fusion-unsup
This will create the 21 packages required ;)

 Enjoy !

Thanks to Chris Wang, Compiz's extra plugins are available on solaris x86.

Note : you may experience some weird behaviours, even crashes with these third party plugins are not all well tested.

 
burn transition effect from the animation plugin

To install the packages on Solaris x86 you have 3 options :

1) Use the following install script to install compiz and the extra plugin all in one go.
2) Download only the extra plugins as precompiled packages for solaris x86 and install them with pkgadd (useful is you already have compiz installed).
3) Compile the package yourself from the spec-file-extra repository. The package name is SFEcompiz-extra.

See my previous blog entry for instructions on how to run compiz.

The extra-plugins packages contain around 20 compiz plugins. The plugins enabled by default are :

- Animation. It provides a lot of funky transition effects between different window states (creation, minimize, destroy, etc).
- Ring. I provides an alternate 3D circular task switcher. Use the keyboard shortcut Mod4+tab (Mod4 = diamond key on Sun's keyboard) to see it.
- Thumbnail. It provides a live thumbnail of the minimized apps in the taskbar.
- Trailfocus. opacify and make translucent non focused windows.

You can enable and play with the other plugins via the compiz settings manager (gnome menu->preferences->Compiz Settings Manager).

Enjoy :)