Emerald is a 3D window decorator for compositing window managers such as Compiz in Ubuntu. Emerald has grown into a very complex window decorator for 3D desktops and supports a wide variety of settings and ways to develop your own themes easily. Emerald is a critical component of my current Ubuntu setup and a few folks have asked what they need to do if they want it to run at startup. Here’s how:
Run emerald at Startup
Learning how to get Emerald to run at startup was quite tough. Largely becuase there’s a lot of advice articles on the internet that just didn’t work for Intrepid Ibex. For example, many Linux users were advising to run a command in terminal using the “replace” operator. If you run the terminal command “emerald –replace” then Emerald will become the current Window decorator, but as soon as you close Terminal or restart the machine, your change is lost.
If you want to run Emerald on startup, you’re going to need the Compiz Settings Manager to get Emerald running every time. I wrote a post on how to install compiz a while ago, so that may come in handy for some background.
The package is called: compizconfig-settings-manager. Installing it in Ubuntu is easy – go to Synaptic Package Manager (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager) and do a search for compizconfig-settings-manager. Check the install box and click apply.
Now, if you go to System>Preferences you’ll see that a new menu item has appeared – “CompizConfig Settings manager”. Open the menu.
Next, open “Window Decoration” and add “emerald –replace” into the command section like this:
That’s it! exit Compiz Settings Manager and restart your Ubuntu Machine to test the change. If you followed the instructions, you’ll have Emerald as soon as your machine reboots.
thanks for strait forward advice