Compton, a lightweight composer you must try

Those who chat with me on the IRC, they know I'm a fan of lightweight desks. I spend it in Xfce, LXDE, open box and even Mate, since other environments like Gnome / Cinnamon y KDE They are very heavy for my modest PC.

Likewise, I entertain myself customizing such desks and assembling them light applications that allow me to have a system as complete as possible with low consumption.

Long ago our friend TheSandman86 tell us about Crunchbang 11, which included a composer named Compton, which I have been testing and which I will talk more about today.

To begin with, Compton is a light composeras mentioned before) that is included in crunchbang. This composer is a fork de xcompmgr-dana, which in turn is a fork of xcompmgr. With this you already get an idea of ​​how light it is, but I will tell you: with almost all the options it has activated, its consumption is 2MB. Great, don't you think? 🙂

To prove it, we must download it from your page git y compile it. Their dependencies are the same as needed to compile xcompmgr. I put them here:

• libx11
• libxcomposite
• libxdamage
• libxfixes
• libxrender
• pkg-config
• make
• xproto / x11proto
• xprop, xwininfo / x11-utils.

We install git and we do (in a terminal):

git clone git://github.com/chjj/compton.git

That will download the compton code to the folder we are in in the terminal. Then we execute:

cd compton
make
sudo make install/

With that we will have Compton installed. Compton is executed by the terminal, and we can know the Available options with man compton. However as a courtesy, I leave you some examples:

compton -c : the most basic form of composition. Composition standard with shadows on windows, panels and docks (predefined values).

compton -cCGb : composition with shadows on windows, preventing them from appearing in panels and docks, and drag and drop windows.

compton -r 12.0 -o 0.75 -l -15.0 -t -15.0 -I 0.028 -O 0.03 -D 3 -c -f -C -F -G : this is medium long xD It is the one I use. Has Shadows that do not burn to panels and docks, animations «fade in out"To window, as in Menus.

Well with that last setup my desktops look like this:

As you can see, the result is quite satisfactory. Nice effects in a reduced consumption, and in desks that algunos would qualify as poor compared to Gnome o KDE.

Adding Compton to the start of desktops

Of course we do not want to be activating the composition manually 😛 So we have to explain how to add Compton to the automatic start of some desktops.

Xfce: we are going to Configuration manager »Session and start» Applications autostart »Add and we add the command with the options of our preference.

LXDE: we edit the file / etc / xdg / lxsession / LXDE / autostart and we add «@»Followed by the command and the options we want. For example, the one in my Arch LXDE contains this:

[code] @lxpanel –profile LXDE
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE
@xscreensaver -no-splash
@setxkbmap latam
@ / usr / bin / numlockx on
@compton -r 12.0 -o 0.75 -l -15.0 -t -15.0 -I 0.023 -O 0.03 -D 3 -c -f -C -G
[/ Code]

Openbox: for Openbox, we must edit the file ~ / .config / openbox / autostart (If it doesn't exist, we create it) and add the command and options at the end, followed by "&" (preferably). For example:

thunar --daemon &
nitrogen --restore &
tint2 &
compton -r 12.0 -o 0.75 -l -15.0 -t -15.0 -I 0.028 -O 0.03 -D 3 -c -f -C -F -G &

These are just examples, you can try other desktops or window managers. And if they want share your configuration, feel free to write it in our paste, and leave it in a comment 😉

Extra: Gcompton, a graphical interface for Compton

Well, it happens that our dear companion They are Link, has been working on a Graphic interface for ComptonCalled gcompton. It is written in Python y GTK. From it we can adjust all parameters de Compton and start it, stop it y restart it. And if we press the button «Add to login session«, Will give us a command that we can add to the beginning of our desktop. Without a doubt, very useful for those who prefer a GUI instead of a terminal.

Gcompton is available at the Son Link Github, along with other of his projects. To install it, in a terminal we do:

git clone git: //github.com/son-link/gcompton.git

Then we go to the folder and execute the file gcompton.py. However, in case it doesn't start them, edit that file, and look for "Gcompton.glade", and change it to the full path to it. For example, «/Home/user/gcompton/gcompton.glade», where user is your user (obviously…).

So how about Compton? Do you use any other window composers? Or do they not use composers? Talk, I'm all ears 😛