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The title pretty much says it all: in your experience, which widget engine is most compatible (stable) when used in conjunction with the Compiz Widget Layer?

http://wiki.compiz.org/Plugins/Widget lists Screenlets, GDesklets, XDesklets, SuperKaramba & Moonlight Widgets as common engines but provides no data on which work best with Compiz.

Last time I used a widget layer I noticed that widgets didn't always stay on the layer (sorry can't remember which engine I was using, it was quite some time ago) - hence my question.

Right now I'm running Lucid.

I realise this may be somewhat subjective but I think your actual experiences matter.

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4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Yes they are compatible... i have used screenlets before. This might help you http://www.ubuntugeek.com/screenlets-work-with-compiz-widget-layer-in-ubuntu-gutsy.html

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Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. – Eliah Kagan Jan 8 at 18:44
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Everything has more to do with how efficient the resource usage is then compatibility with Compiz.

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The best in my opinion, are plasma widgets. But that needs KDE.

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seen some comments about that elsewhere in this site. Seems you can get them to work under gnome so long as you're ok with installing a lot of kde on the way past. – LRE Oct 14 '10 at 1:27
Yes they work on Gnome too. Before moving completely to KDE, I used a mix of both. See this ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1291048 (I haven't updated that tutorial for a while tho). Anyway, you can install kde-minimal and kdeplasma-addons, which have just essential packages. I would recommend trying on a VM, to make sure you like the result. – lovinglinux Oct 14 '10 at 1:55
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Opera (web browser) provides the option of desktop widgets. Under compiz to separate them to the widget layer:

  1. Open the CompizConfig Settings Manager
  2. Click on Widget Layer
  3. Click on Behaviour Tab
  4. Enter role=opera-widget in the blank for Widget Windows

The downloaded widgets are store under ~username/bin. There is also an option to create a .deb file for downloaded widgets.

Cool, eh?

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