Using Emerald with Natty Narwhal (1 Viewer)

[Buickman]

I'm a big fan of the Slatehorn themes used with Emerald, however I couldn't get Emerald to run correctly until I found this. For this to work, you must have a 3d capable card like an ATI or NVidia and have that driver installed and running. You must also have Compiz-Fusion installed. I used this procedure;

http://www.howtoforge.com/enabling-compiz-fusion-on-an-ubuntu-11.04-desktop-with-the-unity-desktop

I'm not a big fan of Unity so I'm still running the classic. To get Emerald running I used this;


1. Completely remove Emerald

sudo apt-get purge emerald

2. Install some deps packages

sudo apt-get install git autoconf libtool libwnck1.0-cil-dev libwnck-dev intltool libdecoration0-dev libemeraldengine0

3. Fetch emerald via GIT

git clone git://anongit.compiz.org/fusion/decorators/emerald

4. Compile and install

cd emerald

git checkout -b compiz++ origin/compiz++

./autogen.sh

./configure -prefix=/usr/local

make

sudo make install

Then you can run this in a terminal

emerald --replace

You can also place the above command into your "Startup Applications" so it will run everytime you log in.


Now some things that the "How To" doesn't tell you

You can then re-install emerald in order to get the emerald theme-manager to install;

sudo apt-get install emerald

From there I was able to import the slatehorn themes that I like.

Also, beware that by missing just one step you can mess your system up. Use at your own risk.

 

[Hedon James]

thanks Buick! As always, appreciate the knowledge. I'm also not a fan of Unity, at least not yet.

I've got it on a VM of my test box, so truthfully it's the 2d version, but that's just 3d without the effects, right?! I'm trying to give it a fair chance. I WANT to like it, but I'm not there yet. To me, it looks like a laptop interface, or perhaps a tablet interface, which was their stated intent for a "Unified" appearance across devices. But that is NOT what I want on my desktop, where I'm very pleased and comfortable with Gnome (although I'd be interested in seeing Gnome 3.0 on a tablet or laptop though!!!)

Maybe the world is slowing passing me by, but I don't see anything wrong with different interfaces on different machines, cuz different machines are different tools with different functions. I love 10.04 on my desktop and I love the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my netbook (the earliest hint of what Unity would become) and I'm pretty fond of Android on my cellphone. I'm gonna stick with that until something better COMPELS me to change...and that's the beauty of Linux...no more forced M$ upgrades and involuntary software purchases to make things work like they used to before the update/upgrade was forced.

For me, my desktop is for work production and my netbook is for web-surfing and media consumption throughout the house, without being confined to my desk. For most things I "consume" my Android tablet is perfect, but I really miss a physical keyboard, although I've quickly adapted to computing without a mouse or touchpad. Still, I find myself gravitating to my netbook for forum surfing, etc... which requires typing.

Sorry, it appears I've hijacked your thread with an alternative discussion. To get it back on track...there's still plenty of time to figure out where I stand on this Unity interface before the next Ubuntu LTS releases! Anyone else want to chime in with thoughts on Unity? I'll eventually make up my own mind, but in the interim, I'm looking to be persuaded by others' perspectives...