One of the main complaints with most if not all Linux Distributions is the user experience and overall look and feel of the Desktop and GUI applications. Apple and Microsoft have added an enormous amount of eye candy to OS X and Vista and the difficulty in getting the same or better results in Linux can be frustrating.

Traditionally, Unix was designed to be a fast, reliable distributed operating system, with one box serving and hosting many different user environments. Compare this with the design goals of Windows, in which networking and distributed control were an afterthought and the main use case was a single user Desktop personal computer experience. Linux Desktops have come a long way and just like many people now use Windows for server type needs such as controlling a multiple user environment, web hosting, file hosting, etc, many people are turning to Linux for their desktop needs. Paying such high prices for software whose functionality can often be obtained for free seems a bit ridiculous to begin with, and often there are few proprietary OS commercial programs that don’t have open source equivalents or better. Even .NET developers have Mono to program against!

Despite this, new users of Linux often get confused and put off with even the friendliest distributions such as Mandriva and Ubuntu. However, I believe getting a nice user experience from the Linux Desktop can be pleasant and worth switching from OS X or Vista or XP to Linux. This is a small step by step guide to getting compiz and emerald working with and NVIDIA card and openSUSE 10.3, your mileage may vary with an ATI card and/or another Linux distro.

1. The first step is to get the Nvidia card working correctly. This is best done through YaST Software Management but that did not work for me, I had to download the driver and compile it myself.

2. After this you should use NVIDIA X Server Settings to configure the desired settings for your monitor(s). I have 2 Widescreen Samsung LCDs running at 1440×900. Make sure to save the configuration to your X file and restart X or reboot after saving this file.

3. Decide whether you are going to use KDE or Gnome. Another consideration here is how you want your OS X style menu bar configured. This is described in Step 6

4. Now you want to download and configure compiz-fusion. On openSUSE this is dead simple one click install. These settings control the window behavior on the desktop, fading effects, wobbly windows, etc. Also your desktop can become a series of multiple Desktops that are tied together through various geometrical configurations, such as a rotatable sphere and a flat rectangle. For those of you who tried compiz with openSUSE 10.2, you will be amazed about how much easier and more automated this has become. Praises to the openSUSE team for improving this.

5. Configure and use emerald theme manager and refer to kde-look and gnome-look for community contributions including new themes. This is primarily how the windows themselves look, you can easily swap from OS X and Vista style windows and fonts to very nice looking, custom created themes. One problem with emerald is that certain video cards may experience slowdowns when switching windows and tabs. This is most likely due to bugs in the graphics card drivers themselves. In this case you can use either KDE or Gnome to manage your window themes.

6. Install a Mac OS X style menu bar if you are a OS X user. Gnome users can refer here for this. Hardcore Mac junkies should refer here and KDE users can refer here.

7. Change your background to better match your emerald theme, you will be surprised how much this can make a difference.

The compiz and openSUSE teams have done a good job at making it easy to get a nice desktop experience with Linux. It would help if Nvidia drivers were easier to update so that new users of Linux don’t have to compile the driver themselves. Also, the driver should be fixed so that emerald does not cause a slowdown on some systems. Other than those issues, I would recommend trying this if you are using or experimenting with Linux and would like to change desktop look and feel.