How do I enable live window resizing in Ubuntu 13.04?

Question

In Ubuntu 13.04 when you resize an application window by clicking with the mouse on any of its borders the whole window area gets covered by an orange transparent film; if then the mouse cursor is moved in any direction the orange area is dynamically changed following the mouse cursor position, but the window size gets actually changed only when the mouse button is released.

How do I change this behavior so that the window size is actually changed on the fly with the mouse cursor?

Solution

If you install the CompizConfig Settings Manager, you can tweak the resize setting:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then run it either by firing up the dash and searching for CompizConfig, or run ccsm from the terminal.

Look under Window Management -> Resize Window -> General -> Default Resize Mode and change it to Normal and you should have sensible window resizing again!

Comments

[Marco Lackovic]

I wish there were a simpler way to do that, which doesn't require the installation an application.

[Seb]

True. But it's a rather nifty application all the same, and it works just fine :)

[TechiRik]

Is there a way to make live resizing not super janky?

[devius]

@DmitryPashkevich Yes, use an Intel GPU. Apparently Nvidia and AMD GPUs have problems when this resize mode is enabled, but with Intel everything works great. That's probably why it's disabled by default.

[TechiRik]

I have Intel Ivybridge and window resizing is pretty janky for me