CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

Openbox, xcompmgr, transset & Conky

I had some spare time yesterday and I decided to spend it playing with compositing under Openbox. I'm not normally too fussed about having eye-candy on the desktop; however, a few people have mentioned 3D effects, in IRC and on the forums, so I thought I'd have a go at configuring xcompmgr on one of my systems.

I was surprised to find that enabling compositing under Openbox was actually quite a straightforward affair, although due to some conflicts with Conky I did manage to explode my desktop on the first attempt.

Fixing Conky for use with xcompmgr

Conky can behave quite badly with xcompmgr, I know this because I've experienced the bad behaviour first-hand. Conky needs to be drawn in its own window, if it isn't it'll cause all manner of funky side effects, including making all your windows disappear completely. To fix this you'll need to edit your .conkyrc file and make sure it includes the following settings:

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop

Installing & starting xcompmgr

xcompmgr is a compositing manager for X, it enables basic eye-candy effects such as shadows, fading and translucency. It's available to install via the Ubuntu repositories, enter the following terminal command to install it:

sudo apt-get install xcompmgr

Once the xcompmgr is installed, it can either be run from the terminal, or the start command can be placed in Openbox's autostart.sh to start it automatically when you login. Full details of xcompmgr's options are available via the man page:

man xcompmgr

A popular command used to start xcompmgr with shadows is:

xcompmgr -c -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 &

Or, to enable shadows and fading, start xcompmgr with:

xcompmgr -cCfF -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 -D6 &

Setting transparency with transset

Once xcompmgr is running, transparency of individual windows can be achieved by using the transset utility. transset is also available to install via the Ubuntu repositories, enter the following terminal command to install it:

sudo apt-get install transset

Run transset with the following command:

transset X

Where X is a value from 0 - 1. 0 being fully transparent and 1 being fully opaque. Once the command has been entered your mouse cursor should change to a crosshair, simply click on the target window to apply the transparency. For example, the following command will set the target window to 50% transparency.

transset .5

Screenshots of xcompmgr enabled desktop

Screenshot showing various applications, note the drop shadows and transparency:

Screenshot showing a practical use of transparency, reading instructions from a web page whilst typing commands into the terminal:

Regarding the eye-candy

I quite like it. I think the transparency has rather limited practical use, as do the drop shadows and fading;however, the effects do add a certain amount of je ne sais quoi to the desktop. Also, I haven't witnessed any noticeable slowdown of my system or any negative effects, as yet.