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I am still using Ubuntu 12.04, mostly because of the 'Gnome Classic without effects' desktop provided by gnome-fallback-session.

I like to use a non compositing desktop, as compositing seems to introduce slight latencys and slightly raised battery use in everyday use.

I tried the Gnome-Shell, Cinnamon and Unity on Ubuntu 14.04, but none of them can be run without compositing it seems. Xfce and LXDE do, but both are not so well featured or integrated as the heavier ones.

So is there any way of running a modern desktop without compositing?

dronus
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  • There's Enlightenment (compositing is optional, IIRC). – muru Nov 14 '14 at 15:53
  • Define "modern". KDE is worth a try , followed by XFCE, LXDE, and Fluxbox or openbox, depending on what you want. Enlightenment is nice, but, the default settings leave a little to be desired. – Panther Nov 14 '14 at 15:58
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    "modern" to me is not a matter of opinion. I read that as "released recently" or "not end of life" :P – Rinzwind Nov 14 '14 at 16:03
  • Ok, 'modern' was a little vague, sorry. I consider LXDE as not so modern and not so well integrated, as it just don't provide some functionalities much used nowadays, for example switching and aligning displays by GUI. – dronus Nov 14 '14 at 16:13
  • Modern is perhaps a vague term, but the main question in the title can definetly be answered . – hetepeperfan Dec 10 '15 at 14:07

2 Answers2

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howtogeek has this to say about it:

Use a Non-Composited Desktop

If you do want to play 3D games in windowed mode and get maximum performance, you’ll need a non-composited desktop.

If you’re using Ubuntu 12.04, you can select Unity 2D on the login screen. Ubuntu 12.10 users will have to use a different desktop environment, as Unity 2D is no longer available.

Unity and GNOME Shell don’t allow you to disable compositing, although many other desktops do. You may want to try Xfce, KDE, or another desktop environment – just ensure you disable compositing in the desktop you choose. (Perform a Google search to learn how to disable compositing on your desktop of choice.) You’ll lose the fancy graphical effects, but windowed 3D rendering will speed up.

It mentions 12.10 but you can read this as "12.10 and newer".

The link has several desktops listed but I would start with XFCE if I was you. Mind though: compositing will be enabled on first install and you need to turn it off yourself. Regarding the 2 mentioned in the article, xfce and kde:

Community
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Rinzwind
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  • So Gnome and it's descendants like Unity and Cinnamon won't provide non compositing in any way any more? – dronus Nov 14 '14 at 16:14
  • That's kind of sad.. 3D games are not the only thing that gets affected.. there are other kinds of realtime imagery and productive tools that benefits from lag free rendering as well. – dronus Nov 14 '14 at 16:16
  • @dronus yes on the 1st. On the 2nd: well games is an example (and the popular one of course since "everyone" wants to game on Ubuntu). – Rinzwind Nov 14 '14 at 18:59
  • GNOME flashback (Metacity) is still around but it may not be so "modern". – Takkat Nov 14 '14 at 19:46
  • What package would provide a Metacity based session on 14.04 LTS ? – dronus Nov 17 '14 at 23:39
  • Put this in a browser @dronus: apt://gnome-session-flashback – Rinzwind Nov 18 '14 at 05:59
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So thanks to @Rinzwind's answer and comments on it, I figured out that Metacity is still around in vanilla Ubuntu 14.04, and can be installed by installing 'gnome-panel'.

The provided 'Gnome Classic Fallback (Metacity)' session does not use compositing, looks mostly like Gnome 2.x, and sports all current Gnome tools like settings center, providing for example a working up-to-date display settings panel like gnome-shell would do. The settings even allows the placement of the old-school panels to other screens etc., so they actually provide more options in respect to Ubuntu 12.04.

This way, almost all Gnome features are available besides the gnome-shell itself on a non-compositing desktop.

dronus
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