So I set of to figure out if I could get my desktop to work without Compiz. I wanted this because Compiz wants your virtual desktop to be smaller then 2048 pixels, which sucks. The thing keeping me from just turning Compiz off was, please don’t kick me, Google Gadgets. I really love that little app, but it looks like total crap without a compositing window manager.

Then I remembered that Gnome 2.22 (the default in Ubuntu 8.04) has ‘some’ compositing features. Some searching gave me this:http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.22/#sect:metacity. That works just fine, Google apps does still have a transparent background.

Cool! So now I can disable Compiz (Appearance -> Visual Effects –> none). With my setup that also killed the <Alt>Tab – windows switch. That is solvable in the Keyboard Shortcuts under the remarkable name of: “Move between windows with popup”. It took me 30 minutes to find that…

With that done, I wanted to have the fn-f7 of my Sony to work as it was meant to. It should switch through the different monitor settings possible: internal, external, both, mirrored… I found a script that does this perfectly: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Sample_Fn-F7_script

Having that script it was easy to add a acpi key event that calls the script. I created two scripts:

• sonyvideoswitch (download)

Download sonyvideoswitch.sh and move it to /etc/acpi

• sony-videoswitch:

# /etc/acpi/events/sony-brightness-up
event=sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000012
action=/etc/acpi/sonyvideoswitch.sh toggle

Create sony-videoswitch in /etc/acpi/events/.

NOTE: don’t forget to add the Virtual to your SubSection “Display” in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. This should contain the maximum virtual desktop.