Ubuntu Compiz Woes

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been using dual-monitor support in the new Ubuntu 9.04 with my Thinkpad T60 w/ATI drivers out of the box and it had been all been working quite well... that is... until today. For some reason, after switching my configuration from laptop screen only to dual screen with laptop & external monitor, my gnome-session went all white. Even after rebooting several times, each time gnome would start (after logging in with gdm), the screen would go all white. After screwing around with it for way too long, trying to login with the failsafe gnome session and a number of other unsuccessful things, I hit upon a post suggesting I might uninstall compiz-core as it might be a compositing window manager issue. I didn't really want to do that cuz I could guess I'd have a nightmare getting that working later, but I went ahead and did it. Sure enough, that got rid of my white screen problem and of course, got rid of my compositing effects too. So now, I needed to get that all back.

I thought just doing the opposite and reinstalling compiz-core would do the trick - but that wasn't quite enough. It did reinstall the base compiz functionality but then I was left with the problem that my windows had no menubar and couldn't be resized or moved. Being fairly unfamiliar with all the components that go into making a fully functional compiz/gnome working system, this became a little bit of an annoyance. After googling some more and searching all the compiz-related packages I could install, I began to notice some gnome/gtk-related compiz packages and realized they hadn't been installed, so I installed them and that pretty much seemed to have done the trick. Here's a brief list of the history of commands I executed to get stuff working again - probably don't need it all but...

483 sudo apt-get install compiz-core
493 sudo apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-bcop
494 sudo apt-get install compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported
496 sudo apt-get install compiz-gnome
497 sudo apt-get install compiz-gtk
498 sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

One nice thing I did pick up from this trouble was... with 8.10 or so, I'd lost the nifty compiz settings manager where I could enable all the cool extra effects. I thought maybe they'd been gotten rid of since compiz and beryl had merged (I think they did didn't they???). Apparently, it turns out Ubuntu just doesn't include that managment screen anymore (which I don't understand at all) but it's still available, so that's the last package I installed in the list above.