As I mentioned in my earlier post, I fought a battle with Compiz today. I think some notices might be useful for others as well.
In the newest version using <Ctrl>-<Alt>-Up for the window selection thingy makes Compiz crash pretty easily. That is because Compiz tries to change the workspace when selecting windows.
Using desktop-effects makes a mess. Don’t do it. It makes some settings that you don’t want and reduces the sides of the cube to one.
The gnome-compiz-manager started only on the second try every time. It tries to start a new compiz and that fails obviously when a new one appears. The manager does some nice things and is a good thing for the basics. It still does not have all the features necessary for a full configuration.
There is nothing better than gconf-editor. First I used it for adding the workspaces that desktop-effects destroyed. I poked this and that and now I have a transparent hexagonal desktop. There is also the water effect which is rather strange but annotation is something I could really use in case I am presenting something.
In case you have trouble with switching workspaces like I did, you should try the following. In case your workspace is double-switched or moves more than once per key press, you probably have a key mapping conflict. By design plane and cube are mutually exclusive as well as metacity and both of the former. However the wall plugin may do some damage. I didn’t have the gconf settings for both left and right buttons. After I found out that there was a binding for <Ctrl>-<Alt>-Left in the settings I made a new key with left replaced with right and marked them both Disabled. The keys are:
/apps/compiz/plugins/wall/allscreens/options/left_key /apps/compiz/plugins/wall/allscreens/options/right_key
I also uploaded my compiz configuration to my configuration directory.
Note 2012: The links are long since obsolete.