Where are compiz settings saved?

Question

I want to add my compiz settings to a git repo but I'm having a hard time isolating the relevant files. My home directory is a bit of a mess here. I see gnome, compiz, and gconf everywhere. Which are the right ones? :)

Thanks.

Solution 1

It depends on your set-up. They are stored in several locations. The best way for you to find them is to open your Terminal Ctrl-Alt-T, then type sudo locate compiz and press Enter. It will return several results, but you can tell by the names which will contain your settings.

Solution 2

In my Ubuntu 14.04.3 + Mate 1.8.2

dconf dump /org/compiz/profiles/mate/ > my-compiz.ini

and restore by

dconf load /org/compiz/profiles/mate/ < my-compiz.ini

please note that the import/export by compiz, the export works, however, the import will fail to restore all settings.

Solution 3

On my machine, which appears to be Ubuntu 14.10:

~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.10
Release:    14.10
Codename:   utopic

compiz settings turn out to be stored in ~/.config/:

~$ locate compiz | grep ~ | less
<...snip...>
~/.cache/compizconfig-1/wall.pb
~/.cache/compizconfig-1/workarounds.pb
~/.config/compiz-1
~/.config/compiz-1/compizconfig

That ~/.cache/ directory probably isn't worth my time to back up, but on inspection ~/.config/ has a bunch other things that are also worth backing up.

If you're planning to back up your Compiz settings, you might just want to back up the entire parent directory of your compiz settings - you're more likely to end up in a familiar desktop environment that way.

Comments

[Admin]

+1. This is very useful if one would want to transfer settings from one machine/account to another without having to go through compiz settings manager and manually reset all the settings.

[Dane O'Connor]

Looks like the .gconf directory in my case. Running locate compiz | grep /home/<user>/ reveals a few places, but only this directory contains xml files named after the plugins I'm using. Thank you!

[Kalamalka Kid]

what directory does this save the file in?

[Chen Deng-Ta]

the current directory. Or you can specify one by "my-compiz.ini" -> "~\ini\my-compiz.ini", to save in the ini sub-dir in your home dir.

[Kalamalka Kid]

cd / - then - sudo dconf dump /org/compiz/profiles/mate/ nothing happens. no new dir called org created.

[Nick]

Run sudo updatedb before running locate.