Technical stuff Requirements are like water. They're easier to build on when they're frozen.

So, you are using Ubuntu 8.10 (codenamed Intrepid Ibex) and you’d like to play around with Compiz, which made you “wooow”. Let’s see.

Do you have a 3D-capable graphics card? If you don’t, it’s time to go get one now, because otherwise you won’t be able to play with Compiz.

Graphics card drivers should be in place

I have an Nvidia graphics card, and I had already installed the proprietary driver for it. If you haven’t done that already, you should do it now. Installation is done from the Hardware Drivers too, which can be started from System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. It should tell you that there’s an NVIDIA graphics driver available for your system. To install it, click on Activate, wait for the NVIDIA driver to be downloaded and installed. A computer restart is needed in order to use the new driver.

Install Simple Compizconfig Settings Manager & Enable Compiz

Open the Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager), select the package simple-ccsm (simple Compizconfig settings manager) and install it.

Go to System > Preferences > Appearance and select Custom on the Visual Effects tab.

Hurray! You’ve just enabled Compiz!

Configure & play around with Compiz

Open the CompizConfig Settings Manager by going to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager.

Here’s a nice list of shortcuts for you to use while playing around.

Have fun!

P.S. 1: there’s nothing special to do in the case of 64-bit architectures, as you may have already noticed.

P.S. 2: you might want to check out Forlong’s Blog for further details on how to customize Compiz.