Why RGBA? If you are a fan of good old Transparency (like me) then you understand this is something Linux has needed for a long time. Yes it can sort of be done through Compiz with some tweaking…but not GTK+-wide. That’s what RGBA support is all about, allowing a themable transparency throughout the GTK+ widget set. The only problem I have found (outside of non-GTK+ apps not playing well with RGBA) is that certain features don’t want to accept the transparency as well as others. That and a need to give the desktop some finishing touches. And that is just what we are going to do here.

First things first

One of the things you are going to want to do, upon completion of adding RGBA support, is to install the Emerald decorator. Why would you want to do this? Because Emerald will give you the feeling of continuing that RGBA support into the window decorations, whereas the default decorator will not. I’ve covered Emerald before (see my article “Add Emerald for slick window decorations“) so installation shouldn’t be a problem. Once installed you want to use the right theme. For the Murrine themes I have found the Glassified Mac theme to work best. You can browse through the entire Emerald Themes page to find the one that matches your desktop perfectly.

One of the issues you might find is that you have to replace your window decorator every time you log out and log in. This can be a hassel. Instead open up the CompizConfig Settings Manager (click System > Preferences > Compiz Config Settings Manager), do a search for “decorations” (no quotes), select Window Decoration, and replace the command with /usr/bin/emerald. Now your default window decorator is Emerald.

The panel

Probably one of the biggest glitches is portions of the GNOME panel just don’t seem to want to work with RGBA. It took me a while but I figured out a “way” around it.

Figure 1

The biggest issue are the three main menus. No matter what you try you can not get them to work with the transparency. So what I found is to get rid of that applet (it’s actually one applet called Menu Bar) and replace it with the Main Menu Applet. Once you have done that you can then set the panel to transparent. You can’t set it to complete transparency, however, or you will have a bit of a disconnect with the notification area. There are still issues with some of the applets in the notification area…but they don’t stand out as much as the Menu Bar. Figure 1 shows the changes I have made. It’s not perfect, but it fits much better with the new desktop.

Figure 2

What does that new Main Menu applet look like when used with RGBA support? Take a look at Figure 2 for a sample.

Final thoughts

The addiction to eye candy is a rough one. You find yourself tweaking and tweaking until you think you can tweak nor more…until you find yet another tiny customization that looks better. The RGBA-enabled desktop is a fairly slick one. I hope you find it to be as eye-candy-tastic as I have.

One of those ways is using the Compiz “3D” desktop. But using Compiz is not enough for me. I want my windows decorated far more than the average window manager can handle. That’s where Emerald comes in. Emerald is a window decorator that usually ships with Compiz but does not always include everything you need. And in some instances, Compiz doesn’t include Emerald. That’s an easiest enough problem to figure out and solve.

What is Emerald?

As stated earlier, Emerald is a theme-able window decorator. But Emerald takes window decorating one step further by also allowing for full-composite window decorations. By adding composite to the decoration Emerald can include such features as transparency and drop shadow. And Emerald does this without taking any more of a hit on your resources than a normal window manager. That is, assuming you have the hardware that supports compositing. The main issue is that your graphics chip must support 3D/Direct Rendering. If your hardware can support that, your hardware will work with Emerald. You will also need to have Compiz installed (this article will assume you have Compiz up and running).

Getting and installing

The good news is that Emerald will be in your repository. Here are the steps to install Emerald:

• Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
• Do a search for “emerald” (no quotes)
• Mark Emerald for installation.
• Click Apply to install.

Now, the bad news is that Emerald will only install with one theme. You will have to find new themes on line. There are plenty of places to find Emerald themes. The best location I have found is the Compiz Community. Search through those themes and download the ones you like. Download those files to a single directory (let’s say ~/THEMES) We’ll talk about adding them in a moment.

Running Emerald

In order to start Emerald you have to run it such that it will replace your current window decorator. To do this open up the Run Command dialog (in GNOME you’ll hit <Alt>F2) and enter the command:

emerald –replace

You will immediately see your window decorations change. The default theme is a transparent red-ish theme.

Figure 1

Now you will want to open up the theme manager. You will find the Emerald Theme manager in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu. When the theme manager opens (see Figure 1) you will see no themes listed. In Figure 1 you can see a theme (Overglass) which has been added. All themes you have added to Emerald will be listed here.

Adding themes

The themes you download will be in .emerald format. All you need to do to add a theme is click on the Import button, navigate to the theme you want to add and click OK. The theme will change to the new theme, you actually have to select that new theme for it to take affect. To switch to the newly added them just select the theme from the listing in the Themes tab of the manager.

Start Emerald at login

One issue you will find is that Emerald doesn’t automatically start at login. Without setting it up to automatically start, you will have to start it via command line every time you log into your account. Fortunately you can set this up easily. To do so you open up the Startup Applications Preferences. Locate this tool in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu.

Figure 2

When it opens up you will see a simple window with two tabs and a few buttons. Click on the Add button to open up the Add Startup Program window (see Figure 2). You can see, in Figure 2, the details you need to add for this to work. Once you have added the information click the Add button and then click the Close button.

Now the next time you log in to your desktop Emerald will be your window decorator.

Final thoughts

Of all the window decorators out there you will find Emerald to be the best of the best. Not only does it offer numerous attractive themes, it won’t take as much of a hit on your performance as you might think it would. Give Emerald a try and you will see just how far the desktop can go.