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I want to make every window ]transparent with opaque text. I have done some search on the internet and the answer I got is:

  • Open Compiz Config Settings Manager.
  • Click on Opacity, Brightness and Saturation in the Accessibility section.
  • Under 'Window specific settings' click 'New'
  • Type '(type=any)' into the 'Windows' text box and set 'Window values' to 20.

This works but makes the content of the window transparent (including the text) as well as the background.

And also there are provided options to increase and decrease opacity. On the same page I am successfully able to utilise that feature by configuring keyboard shortcuts as well as mouse shortcuts, but I was not able to add a shortcut that uses the scrolling of the middle mouse button.

I think these two feature would help me as well as Ubuntu to a great extent.

Right now I am using Ubuntu 11.04. In 11.10 I heard GNOME 3 will be used and this uses Mutter. What happens to Compiz?

As a summary I have 3 questions

  1. How can I give every window a transparent background while keeping opaque content?

  2. How can I use the mouse wheel to increase and decrease opacity?

  3. What will happen to Compiz in 11.10?

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closed as too localized by Jorge Castro, Takkat, htorque, Marco Ceppi Jan 30 '12 at 23:06


Please split this up into 3 separate questions. –  dv3500ea Jul 23 '11 at 14:22
Abandoned question, flagging as such. –  Caesium Jan 28 '12 at 17:16

1 Answer 1

  1. This is possible in GNOME, XFCE and LXDE with librgba, but it can cause problems with many programs (so much so that I stopped using it for now and don't recommend it any more). It is also possible in KDE with a special version of Oxygen, but I also would not recommend this as it is currently unsupported and possibly buggy.

  2. You need assign the shortcuts to buttons 5 and 4 or 5 and 6 (usually). Sometimes however it may be other buttons, so keep trying till you find the correct buttons.

  3. In 11.10 Compiz will still be used as a requirement for Unity, and probably with GNOME Classic. Mutter is used in GNOME Shell and can optionally be used with GNOME Classic and similar desktop environments.

  • When asking questions please keep it down to a single question.
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