How do I set MATE 1.6 to use Compiz?

Question

MATE desktop has recently migrated, as of version 1.6, from using mateconf-editor to gsettings. This breaks traditional solutions for changing MATE's window manager to Compiz.

Solution

I assume you have already installed Compiz. If not:

sudo apt-get install compiz

gsettings has an equivalent operation to the mateconf-editor key-change operation you had to do to set the window manager to Compiz. Now, to activate Compiz, simply run the following terminal command:

sudo gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager compiz

This will change the windowmanager key to compiz in the org.mate.session.required-components schema. Next, I highly recommend installing CompizConfig Settings Manager:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

With this, you are done. You may either run compiz --replace in the Terminal to start Compiz, or simply reboot your machine. I recommend the latter, as the former may have problems.

Comments

[Daithí]

no joy. I'm using ubuntu 14.10 mate and when I've restarted the top bar of all windows is missing

[dpwe]

Hmm. I don't use Ubuntu anymore, but try running gtk-window-decorator --replace after the system boots up?