Compiz worked fine on my installation but Emerald did not: “emerald --replace” just dropped all window decorations. A quick google showed me this is a common problem with 11.1, so I followed the various thread on this forum, and the SUSE wiki pages, to try and solve it, but only ended up with a mess of additional repos and updates which in the e4nd stopped Compiz from working altogether. So I removed everything to do with Compiz, got rid of all the extra repos, and reinstalled from the OSS repos. Compiz works again, but Emerald doesn’t.
How do I get Emerald to work in 11.1?
Starting from the KDE Classic Menu . . .
Utilities ==> CompizConfigSettingsManager ==> Effects ==> Window Decoration
In the ’ Command ’ line place the following:
emerald --replace
[You can use the Fusion-Icon with a Righty-Click to bring up the Windows Decoration Manager and reselect/reload if your windows headers disappear.]
I’m using Gnome but the procedure is the same and well known to me. Trouble is, it doesn’t work! I can enable Compiz (although I see to have to do it every reboot now), but I can’t enable Emerald. “Emerald --replace” or the Compiz icon alternative just remove the Metacity window decorations without enabling the Emerald ones.
Hi,
Do you have Emerald installed? Please open a terminal and provide the output of
rpm -qa --last "*compiz*"
Good Luck,
Ian
Here it is:
hgm@linux-3y62:~> rpm -qa --last "*compiz*"
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra-0.7.8-2.16 Sun 24 May 2009 22:12:56 EST
compiz-emerald-0.7.8-2.4 Sun 24 May 2009 22:12:52 EST
compiz-fusion-plugins-main-0.7.8-4.16 Sun 24 May 2009 22:12:49 EST
compiz-emerald-themes-0.6.0-1.53 Sun 24 May 2009 22:12:47 EST
compiz-manager-0.0.1_git080201-52.1 Sun 24 May 2009 22:12:45 EST
compizconfig-settings-manager-0.7.8-1.45 Sun 24 May 2009 22:06:15 EST
python-compizconfig-0.7.8-1.49 Sun 24 May 2009 22:06:13 EST
libcompizconfig-0.7.8-1.49 Sun 24 May 2009 22:06:12 EST
compiz-gnome-0.7.8-9.1 Sun 24 May 2009 22:03:32 EST
compiz-0.7.8-9.1 Sun 24 May 2009 22:03:29 EST
compiz-branding-openSUSE-0.7.8-9.1 Sun 24 May 2009 22:03:27 EST
hgm@linux-3y62:~>
I’m not completely familiar with GNOME, in fact, I’m not at all familiar with it. So I’m not sure what packages are required for compiz to work. The only thing that looks fishy is your
compiz-manager-0.0.1_git080201-52.1
package. Mixing compiz packages usually doesn’t end well. I don’t have that package installed but I’m using KDE 4. So perhaps uninstalling that might help. You could also try reinstalling emerald just to make sure it’s installed right. Otherwise you could try updating compiz.
Good Luck,
Ian
That file appears to be required by simple-ccsm, and seems indeed to be gnome-specific. I’ve already reinstalled Emerald twice, and updated Compiz following the instructions on that page. It was only when all that led nowehere and only made things worse that I wiped everything with Compiz in its name and reinstalled from the OSS repo. Now it’s working (but no Emerald), although I seem to have to restart Desktop Effects after every boot and suspend.
Hmmm… This is quite the curious case indeed. You’ll either have to wait for someone who knows about the gnome implementation of compiz-fusion, or we can try the newest version AGAIN to see if we can’t get that working.
I know sometimes when users try to upgrade to 0.8.2 the one-click installer doesn’t download a certain package or does not install over the 0.7.8 package which causes compiz-fusion to not work.
So if you would like to give 0.8.2 you would have to remove all your compiz packages and then try the one-click. Then after it’s done installing try out compiz fusion. If memory serves me right, it will not download the fusion icon so you might have to keep that or download it manually. If it doesn’t work after that we’ll have to check and make sure the packages downloaded correctly.
Of course if you just want to wait for someone else’s input that’s fine too 
Good Luck,
Ian
That’s how all my trouble started in the first place: to try and get Emerald to work, I zapped everything Compiz and installed the latest version via one-click. You’re right, there was a problem with the icon. The end result was Compiz not working at all, which is why I reverted to this version.
I don’t mind trying again, shall I?
Finally!!!
But what a journey… Got rid of everything Compiz in Yast. Went to 1-click-install and got all kinds of problems with repos and installation failures. Started again, had to install Gnome update, eventually got everything Compiz and Emerald. Can’t even remember all the individual steps on the road, but I’m now sitting here with Compiz and Emerald finally working…
Thanks for your help/encouragement - I thought if he can get it to work on KDE where nothing else works, there MUST be a way to get it running under Gnome