Ubuntu 8.10 Linux Desktop 3D Effect Settings

1. Enable 3D Desktop

The method to enable 3D desktop was introduced in a previous article (Some settings after installing Ubuntu 8.04). Open Restricted Drivers System–>Administration–>Hardware Drivers, check the “Enabled” option, and the driver will be enabled after restart. After restart, open System–Preferences–Appearance–Visual Effects, where you can choose “Normal” and “Extra” to enable 3D desktop.

2. Manage 3D Desktop By default, you can only choose system-customized 3D effects in Appearance. If you want to control which effects to use, you need to install compizconfig-settings-manager

1
$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then System–>Preferences–>Advanced Desktop Effects Setting to run compizconfig-settings-manager and manage your 3D effects.

4. Effects Introduction (I haven’t fully understood all effects, and many are too flashy. Here I’ll first talk about the effects I enabled that help improve work efficiency)

General–>General options: Desktop Size–> Horizontal Virtual Size select 4 (basically choosing the number of virtual desktops based on your preference) In Display Settings, Texture Filter select best, Refresh Rate select 200, check Lighting, leave the rest unchecked.

Don’t enable anything in Accessibility, I personally feel they don’t look good or flashy.

Desktop: Only enabled Desktop Cube and Rotate Cube. Desktop Cube –> Behaviour, if Inside Cube is selected, the desktop will be placed inside the cube rather than the common outside. Desktop Cube –>Transparent Cube has two values for adjusting transparency, you’ll understand after adjusting.

Rotate Cube –> General, uncheck Edge Flip Pointer, Edge Flip Move, Edge Flip DnD. Speed=500, Timestep=1.0000

Rotate Cube –> Bindings–>Rotate cube: Set Initiate to Button1 (press Control+alt+left click simultaneously, then drag the mouse to rotate the cube) Rotate left/Right rotates the cube left and right, you can set mouse and keyboard shortcuts. Example: Set mouse’s Rotate left to Button1 Set mouse’s Rotate right to Button1 This way you can rotate the cube by directly clicking the left and right edges of the screen to switch virtual desktops.

Rotate left/Right with window rotates the cube while keeping the current window, so you can bring the current task to another virtual desktop. You can also set mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

Window Management:

Only enable Scale in Window Management

Scale Scale–>Bindings, set Initiate Window Picker keyboard shortcut to Tab. This way, pressing win+tab will tile all expanded windows on the desktop, then move the cursor to the window you want and release the key to select that window. Simply put, it allows quick switching between tasks.

Actually, Window Management also has Application Switcher, Ring Switcher, Shift Switcher that can switch windows, but I feel Scale is the fastest.

The above mainly introduces quick switching between virtual desktops and task windows under 3D desktop, which can effectively improve our work efficiency.

Introduction to some other Ubuntu 3D effects

Fire Writing: After enabling drawing fire text on screen, press Shift+win+left click to write fire text on screen. Also set the clear option to clear fire text from screen. Cube Gears When enabled, you’ll see a set of gears rotating inside the cube when rotating it. Windows Preview Window preview effect appears when mouse moves to the bottom panel. Video Playback Said to enhance compiz’s video playback effects. Animation (Genie) Applies random animations to all events, letting you experience different effects.

Cube Reflection When enabled, shows the cube’s reflection when rotating.

Move window Makes windows appear semi-transparent and other effects when moving.

Expo Displays all virtual desktops in the same window, achieving an Expose effect similar to Mac OS X.