Ubuntu Eye Candy: Desktop Effects

So this is a tutorial about how to install some nifty desktop effects in ubuntu. Now under Preferences on the Menu there’s a tab for Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. In order to get this you need to install Compiz Manager. So open up a terminal window, and enter the following:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Once that’s been installed you can access the CompizConfig Settings Manager. You can go through and check off a bunch of different ones to give you some nifty eye candy.

Ubuntu Settings

When you go into one of the settings there will be a plethora of tabs for you to tweek the effects to the millimeter of how you want them to behave.

Effects Settings

CompizConfig Settings are an easy and quick way to install the Desktop Cube, Desktop wall, and the Expo which is identical to the Expo in Mac OS X.

Expo

There are also a plethora of effects for you to install.

Visual Effects

Hopefully this post is fairly helpful, it’s more indepth than most of the videos that I throw up on here, and I hope that everyone enjoys it.

Ubuntu Cube On Mac OS X

Lately it seems like a ton of my OS X running friends have been content with the new spaces visual effect that Leopard supplies. This is until I show them what a properly set up Ubuntu machine (and most other linux distros) can really do. Now I know that this isn’t a complete fix and it certainly isn’t as extensible as the visual effects that you can have installed on your linux box, but this is a quick fix for you OS X machine. The Service is called VirtueDesktops. Virtue Desktops is a free service that installs more visual effects on your machine. As seen in this video one of them is something very similar to the linux cubes.

I’ll try to upload a better video when I get home.

How To Install Ubuntu Cube

In the vein of ultimate things that Ubuntu can do I’ve decided to show you these 2 videos, the first is more Eye Candy showing off the ultimate power of Ubuntu, the second is a short video about how to get a cube desktop working on your own Ubuntu Machine.

In An INSANE DISPLAY OF UBUNTU’S UNLIMITED POWER!

So I’ve had my Macbook running OS X Leopard for a couple of months now, and I have to admit that I am being wooed by the operating systems interesting graphic display abilities, like time machines visual scrolling interface, the cover flow effect in iTunes is really amazing, because it’s so cool to be able to just do album scrolls, then having the insight to build that ability for all of your documents, genius! Also the entire ‘dock’ idea is so different because it eliminates the tediousness of having just 1 giant list of programs before. The entire reflection thing it’s crazy how that really influenced the Web 2.0 look. Anyways if you’re falling under the spell, take a look at this!

AMAZING!
I’m going to have to power up my Ubuntu laptop and figure out how to do some of these things!