[ubuntu-uk] Compiz-Fusion

[Andrew Oakley]

Ted wrote:
> John Taylor wrote:
>> Can get the screen to pivot centrally, screen to wobble etc, but no 
>> **??!! cube
> In General Settings do you have number of desktops set to 2...I have 
> Horizontal size 4, vert size 1 and number of desktops 2

Correct answer.

The geometry of the "pivoting" (rotating) desktop virtualiser in Compiz 
is related directly to the number of horizontal sides. In Ubuntu this 
defaults to 2, which gives you a geometric plane with a front and back.

A cube has 4 workspaces (horizontal sides) plus a top cap and bottom cap.

An easy way of setting this whilst Compiz is running, is to right-click 
the Workspace Switcher on your Gnome panel, select Preferences and 
change the number of Columns (to 4, for a cube; total 6 sides when you 
include the top cap and bottom cap).

There are other possibilities, such as an extruded triangle (3 
workspaces), extruded pentangle (5 workspaces), extruded hexagon (6 
workspaces) and so forth. I got up to at least 12 workspaces (extruded 
dodecagon) before I got bored, and both the Intel i965 and Nvidia 
GeForce2 graphics cards coped fine with that. If there is an upper 
limit, it must be a pretty silly one.

For ease of use, I typically set my number of virtual desktops to the 
same as the number of workspaces of my "cube". In that way, if I ever 
switch Compiz Fusion off (or it crashes - which rarely happens these 
days), I still have the same number of desktops.

I am entirely uncertain what effect the Rows preference has in the 
Compiz Workspace Switcher. I can't see that it does anything at all, or 
at least not with the Compiz "Cube".

-- 
Andrew Oakley