How do I enable the 3D Cube so I can use it in Unity?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How to correctly enable Desktop Cube in Unity 3D?

I'm looking to get the "3D Cube" in Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 1, however last time I tried it after using compiz I lost my desktop and hand to reinstall. However I have read this bug which seems to state this is fixed, however when I go to disable the wall to enable the cube it still seems like its going to break it ( I dont want to try it again as it may break my desktop again :-) )

Anyone able to shed any light on how I go about this?

Solution

There are currently two issues:

1. Every time you enable or disable a plugin in CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm), Compiz (and therefore Unity) will crash.
2. CompizConfig Settings Manager fails to replace the Wall plugin with the Desktop Cube plugin.

One really ugly workaround is to manually set the plugins via the commandline:

gconftool-2 --type l --list-type string --set /apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins "[core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,move,vpswitch,place,mousepoll,resize,staticswitcher,imgpng,regex,gnomecompat,grid,snap,zoom,session,animation,workarounds,fade,cube,expo,scale,rotate,unityshell,unitymtgrabhandles]" && (unity &)

Running this will set the plugins to Unity's default, but will replace Wall with Desktop Cube and Rotate Cube.

Unity's default is to have 2x2 desktops, but for the cube you'll likely want 4x1 desktops. You can change this in the General Options plugin in the CompizConfig Settings Manager. Go to the Desktop Size tab, and change Horizontal Virtual Size to 4 and Vertical Virtual Size to 1.

You should now be able to rotate the cube using the default shortcuts:

Alt + Ctrl + ← and Alt + Ctrl + →

Comments

[user12622]

Thanks for the reply. I've just tested it but run into the same problem, is there any way to get my normal taskbars etc back? I can't even use alt-f2 to run anything thanks again

[Jorge Castro]

@user12622 this should get your working setup back: askubuntu.com/questions/17610/…