I’ve been playing around with Compiz-Fusion on several of my machines. Compiz has improved in quality very quickly since they merged the code base with Beryl. It’s been a lot easier to get it installed and working recently. One thing has been missing from all the recent releases, however. When combining Intel video chipsets, Compiz, and KDE-Window-Decorator, a white border appears around several screen elements (on top of the Kicker, around tool tips). After hunting around for solutions, I found a good combination of things to work around the problem. If you change the configuration backend in CCSM to Gconf, enable the DBUS plugin in CCSM, and change the Shadow Radius in the Window Decoration plugin to something other than a value between 7.5 and 8.5. However, the final value needs to be changed each time Compiz is restarted (which means opening up CCSM, and adjusting the Shadow Radius).
Now, I wouldn’t be writing this post if I didn’t have an even better work-around. The better work around is to add the following to the /usr/bin/compiz startup script:
Replace this line:
${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}${COMPIZ_NAME} $COMPIZ_OPTIONS "$@" $COMPIZ_PLUGINS || exec $FALLBACKWM $FALLBACKWM_OPTIONS
… with the following:
${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}${COMPIZ_NAME} $COMPIZ_OPTIONS "$@" $COMPIZ_PLUGINS &
sleep 2s
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
exec $FALLBACKWM $FALLBACKWM_OPTIONS
fi
sleep 3s
gconftool-2 --type float --set /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/shadow_radius 6.0
sleep 1s
gconftool-2 --type float --set /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/shadow_radius 6.1
After this, the Shadow Radius adjustment will be made a few seconds after Compiz starts, and you will be on your way to a better Compiz experience. 