would removing compiz from ubuntu 14.04 affect unity or any other such dependencies?

Question

since compiz is using too much resources in ubuntu 14, i wish to remove it.I'm worried if that would result in affecting unity?(i don't need the fancy visualizations)

Answer 1

The simple answer is Yes - removing compiz from Ubuntu 14.04 will affect Unity - in-fact it will remove Unity.

You need to understand that Unity on 14.04 is basically a very large Compiz plugin.

Lets have a closer look without affecting your current install:

sudo apt-get -s remove compiz

This is a simulated removal - nothing will actually be removed:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED
  compiz ubuntu-desktop unity unity-tweak-tool
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 4 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
Remv unity-tweak-tool [0.0.6ubuntu1]
Remv ubuntu-desktop [1.325]
Remv unity [7.2.0+14.04.20140416-0ubuntu1]
Remv compiz [1:0.9.11+14.04.20140409-0ubuntu1]

As you can see - say bye-bye to Unity if you remove compiz.

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Given the gist of your question - you perhaps dont have the optimal graphics card and/or driver for this graphics card.

You can check this via this Q&A to see if your graphics card is supporting Unity-3D - any no answers means that Unity is running sub-optimally.

If you are using and AMD or NVIDIA graphics card you should check if there is a proprietary driver available to be installed. This can greatly help with complex animations & transitions that Unity require.

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If after these checks you still want to reduce the Compiz effects, then we've already got a brilliant answers for this - try some of the suggestions to remove the more complex animations such as Compiz Blur.

Alternatively, you may wish to try a lighter desktop environment that is more suitable to your hardware. Suggestions are xubuntu and lubuntu - both of which you can install straight away - you dont need to remove your current installation.

• What kinds of desktop environments and shells are available?
• Is it possible to use multiple desktop environments on same system?