Enable RGBA Window Transparency In Ubuntu Karmic

By , Published February 21, 2010

Enabling RGBA GTK – or, for a helpful description, ‘proper window transparency’ – used to require a ton of compiling followed by a lot of groaning and wondering whether it was worth it.

Well those days are long behind now thanks in part to the Ubuntu team were working on getting an RGBA enabled GTK into Lucid (since postponed to Lucid+1) but also to SoftwareExplorer on the Ubuntu Forums who has packaged up everything you need into a PPA.

Issue. Lots of issues.
Before trying this please remember that there is a reason this support was postponed until Lucid+1. It’s not polished, it doesn’t work properly with every applications and some applications flat-out refuse to run at all with it!

Please keep this in mind before installing.

Install
The installation is a pretty simply affair: -

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude upgrade

This will install all what you need.

Once it’s done its thang you will need to do each of the following steps to get it up and running.

Set Murrine as your Global Engine


Click to view larger

  1. Open up the GNOME Color Chooser from System -> Preferences
  2. Select the ‘Engines‘ tab on the far-right
  3. Check the box next to Global and choose Murrine in the drop down list next to the check box.
  4. Now press the ‘preferences’ button in the global row.
  5. In the window that opens find the title ‘Configuration of Enable/Disable RGBA support’
  6. Check both boxes under that section.
  7. Click OK. Click Apply. Close.

Select a Murrine Theme

  1. Open the ‘Appearance Properties’ window from System -> Preferences
  2. Choose the ‘theme’ tab and then click Customize
  3. In the window that spawns click on the Controls tab
  4. Select a murrine theme.
  5. Close.

Set Blur
In order to be able to read text in windows with any semblance of ease you should probably turn on the Compiz ‘Window Blur’ feature.

Once enabled set the blur mode to ‘Gaussian’ and and the blur radius to 5 or 6.

More information/help
For more information on RGBA GTK and issue/solutions check out the wiki @
wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/RgbaGtkWithPPA

or the Ubuntu Forum thread @
ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1412052

Correction/uninstalling
If you install it and then hate it – don’t worry. It can easily* be put right.

  • Open Synaptic package manager
  • Choose the ‘Origin’ button in the bottom left hand corner.
  • Select the ‘erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk’ PPA from the sidebar on the left
  • Select each package in turn, going to Package > Force Version and choosing the previous version of that package.
  • When you’ve marked all that can be for downgrading click apply.
  • Now open up ‘Software Sources‘ from the System > Admin menu
  • Disable the ‘erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk‘ PPA

*If anyone knows an easier way – let me know!

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Customize The Gnome Panel Clock To Match Karmic’s New Icons
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  • Joakim

    Nice! One addition though, it seems like you manually have to install the gnome colour chooser in case you didnt have it installed alreayd.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      It automatically installed for me so i assumed it was pulled in when updating. Is that not the case?

      • Joakim

        Not for me no, not sure why.

  • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

    I’m all for tinkering and creating stuff just for the heck out of it, but what would you actually use this for? It seems more annoying than anything. I’m sure it’s quite the feat to have created this – I know I sure as hell would be proud – but I can’t come up with any scenario where it would actually be useful.

  • rAX

    Um, great article, but I already have RGBA without all that, so what’s the difference between your RGBA and mine?

    I used Gnome-color-chooser to enable it (or by editing the gtkrc file) and the only apps -for me- that have transparency enable are Emesene, Exaile and Nautilus-Elementary, can all the apps become transparent with that PPA (with a stable release of course)?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      In theory yes. the only applications it doesn’t play ball with are OpenOffice, Firefox and a few others. it add these to the blacklist by default so you can still use them – albeit sans RGBA.

      Quite a few applications don’t play nice still, hence why this native inclusion has been postponed until Lucid+1 itself.

      • rAX

        OK, I understand now that I’ve seen it, btw some people -like me- need to install ‘gtk2-module-rgba’ to make it work (not just an upgrade).

  • https://login.launchpad.net/+id/WhpnWB3 dael99
  • Anonymous

    hate to sound like a n00b but what does “lucid +1″ mean? does this mean that its coming to the first major update to lucid or to the next ubuntu version (10.10)?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Lucid+1 means the next release. It doesn’t have a name yet hence the Lucid “and then” 1

      • Anonymous

        funny whenever you said Lucid+1 I also thought you were referring to the first big update after Lucid; maybe it would be better to refer to it as 10.10 in order to avoid any confusions.

        • Anonymous

          Yeah I agree, I thought you were referring to 10.04.1 instead of 10.10.

          • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

            I’ll bear that in mind for future articles. I only came to use it myself as it’s the form used in Ubuntu wiki’s to refer to 10.10.

  • Anonymous

    what exactly is the difference between this and the windows transparency we get now with compiz? How is this better? is compiz’s transparency faked and this one real (is that why you say “true” transparency)? does it have less of a performance hit for it being “true” or is it the other way around?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Compiz’s transparency also makes GTK widgets transparent (buttons, etc) whereas this only makes the rest of the window transparent leaving the buttons/forms/icons/selectable parts normal.

      It’s easier to just compare the above “real” transparency with the compiz “version” : -

      http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2936/screenshotmpp.png

      • Anonymous

        oh I see; hadn’t notice that the widgets weren’t transparent before you pointed that out for me. thanks! It looks neat.

      • daas88

        I was about to ask the same thing, but i see the difference now.
        Btw, is there a way to make metacity opaque?

      • daas88

        I was about to ask the same thing, but i see the difference now.
        Btw, is there a way to make metacity opaque?

  • ozgurubuntu

    I was at this does not appear? I can’t uninstall

    # Select the ‘erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk’ PPA from the sidebar on the left
    # Select each package in turn, going to Package > Force Version and choosing the previous version of that package.

  • bluebyt

    Me too, cannot uninstall the line ‘erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk’ does not appear in the left sidebar?

    • http://www.trifunovic.me Nikola Trifunović

      I uninstall it using ppa-purge as dael99 sugested

      Add this into terminal :
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
      sudo apt-get update

      Install ppa-purge package :
      sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

      after that enter :
      sudo ppa-purge ppa:erik-b-andersen/rgba-gtk

      this will revert all packages to before state !

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        make sure to remove the xorg-edgers ppa afterwards if you don’t want other packages within that PPA upgrading your current ones.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Hmm… So you don’t see this at all: -

      http://yfrog.com/iyselection002p

      • http://www.trifunovic.me Nikola Trifunović

        I didn’t have that :( What version of synaptic are you using ? Are you using lucid or karmic ?

    • ozgurubuntu

      I found a way ;

      Go Synaptic Package Manager and search “gtk2-engines-murrine”
      Select “gtk2-engines-murrine” and Package > Force Version and choosing the previous version of that package.

      worked ;)

    • Anonymous

      I seems like in karmic the ppa’s are listed under ppa.launchpad.net/main.

  • Yi Sun-sin

    Having transparency working is good, but we still need to get some good theme making a good use of it. That seems to me the hardest part, and I’m still very afraid of transparency !

  • hugmyballs

    And the question everyone’s asking: What’s the point? To have gnome look a little more like Windows? To obscure what you’re *actually* looking at, like the stuff that’s in the content of the active window and not BEHIND it. Does it look cool? Indeed, it DOESN’T. Is it useful? Indeed it ISN’T. Is it usable? Indeed, YOU WISH!

  • http://www.FreezingMoon.org/ Dread Knight

    Too many steps, things like this make linux seem annoying :D

  • bluebyt

    I uninstalled the RGBA PPA, but truecrypt doesn’t work anymore?

    error on the terminal:
    progname=truecrypt; RGBA=on
    The program ‘truecrypt’ received an X Window System error.

    edit:
    Now thunderbird refuse to start, same error?
    progname=thunderbird-bin; RGBA=on

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Have you disabled the settings in gnome colour chooser as well?

  • bluebyt

    Yes I disabled RGBA setting!

  • http://www.tuxbelito.com.ar/ Sr. Luzbel

    But is not beautiful.

  • Anonymous

    flash with google chrome doesn’t work with it … and nautilus don’t have the second pane. :(
    I made it all un-happen – no problem. It’s a nice option and I hope it will work one day really fine.. :)

  • alex

    off-topic:

    those index-icons on the screenshot are pretty nice and handy…
    Did you paint them yourself, is this any foss screenshot/demo software or even a shutter plugin?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      They’re already in shutter – no plugin required :)

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think this is worth it. At least those screenshots I see abuse of transparency. It could be used here and there, but making an entire window transparent and in top of that blurry would be too much for older systems.

    I think it was wise to postpone it. I believe the folks at Ubuntu Artwork will make it look very good and use it in great effect.

    What I would really love to see is Elementary Nautilus by default in some future Ubuntu version and a lighter, faster Nautilus in general.

  • Lucd

    Will it be possible to change what part of each window is transparent in each app independently? Or will every app follow the same set of rules, eg. menus are transparent, behind text areas are not? I think it will be interesting if people find cool/creative ways to use it.

    For example, will something like this be possible?:
    http://lh3.ggpht.com/_58gbj7FEdro/S4HrN4tugjI/AAAAAAAAAtg/Yw913a3YrVc/s800/banshee%20rgba%20mockup1.png

  • Anonymous

    Can’t get this quite to work properly. I followed all the steps, but the only programs effected by the transparency are emesene and nautilus. So far everything else is just as normal and the menus are the same, completely opaque.

    It looks pretty sweet on emesene and nautilus mind..

    • Anonymous

      What happens when you run one of the programs that don’t seem to have rgba on from the terminal? Does it say something like progname=foo; RGBA=on ?
      Also, what do you get if you do
      echo $GTK_MODULES
      echo $GTK_RGBA_APPS
      ?

      • Anonymous

        I tried running VLC, banshee and ccsm from the terminal.

        VLC didn’t give anything weird except:

        ** (:9116): CRITICAL **: atk_object_set_name: assertion `name != NULL’ failed

        and banshee just opened and did nothing else. Tried ccsm too and it didn’t say anything strange, just “Loading icons…”.

        $GTK_MODULES gives: canberra-gtk-module
        $GTK_RGBA_APPS doesn’t say anything.

        • Anonymous

          Does the file /etc/profile.d/gtkrgba.sh exist ?
          If it does, try logging out and back in.
          If it doesn’t, try this, and then run a program from the same terminal and tell me what happens:
          export GTK_MODULES=rgba
          export GTK_RGBA_APPS=allbut:firefox:firefox-3.5:gksudo:ooffice:soffice:inkscape:gksu:gtk-recordMyDesktop:kompozer-bin:gpaint:lernid:totem:truecrypt:thunderbird-bin:thunderbird

          • Anonymous

            gtkrgba.sh doesn’t exist, so I tried your other suggestion.

            I still don’t have transparency when I ran the programs, but I did get this error message :

            Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “rgba”: librgba.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

          • Anonymous

            It sounds like you don’t have the gtk2-module-rgba package installed. Both gtkrgba.sh and librgba.so are files in that package. When you upgraded, did it upgrade nautilus? Because the new (patched) version of nautilus should depend on gtk2-module-rgba.

          • Anonymous

            I had a look in synaptic and searched for rgba. The gtk2-module-rgba package wasn’t installed so I installed it and logged out and back in and now everything works. :) Thanks for all the help.

            Only reason I can think it might not have installed is because I have the elementary version of nautilus installed, if that does anything to it.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I posted a comparison above. This RGBA spiel doesn’t affect GTK widgets whereas compiz transparency affects an entire window – widgets and all.

      Compare: -
      Compiz: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2936/screenshotmpp.png
      RGBA: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FJH0hYZmVtc/S4GO8W7mwFI/AAAAAAAAF88/dh1AAtZoa_A/s400/Screenshot.png

  • dRewsus

    I dont understand the big deal here?
    I have set up compiz-fusion to make particular windows transparent at varying percentages.
    For example, Emesene: Main window is 100%, chat windows are 90%.
    Firefox same sort of idea. My panel is 90% and much more (other chat programs work the same).
    Why is this different/better? My way is also nice cuz I can easily turn it on and off with compiz-switch

  • Anonymous

    Do you mind if I used a (edited) version of the uninstall instructions in the wiki page?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Not at all – although they don’t seem to work for some people. (I guess it’s because i use Lucid?)

      • Anonymous

        It seems like in Karmic the ppa’s aren’t separated, they’re all grouped together under ppa.launchpad.net/main. I added the uninstall instructions to the wiki.
        Thanks.

  • Anonymous

    Does anyone know if there is a way to restrict using rgba on certain programs? It works pretty well, but causes problems in some programs.

    It’d be nice not to have to remove the whole thing because of a couple of bugs.

    • Anonymous

      If you edit /etc/profile.d/gtkrgba.sh as root you can adjust what programs don’t run with rgba. On the line that starts with export GTK_RGBA_APPS=allbut:firefox: … add on to the end the name of the programs that you want to run without RGBA, each separated by a colon. Then log out and back in. If there’s programs that I need to add to the rgba excluded list, it would be nice to know, so I can add then to the list included with the package.

      • Anonymous

        Thanks very much :)

        So far the applications I’ve had problems with are checkgmail, firefox, swiftfox, gloobus-preview (crashes playing video) and flash (putting “exe” in the list fixes it).

        Also smplayer runs, but the interface changes to an ugly dark grey colour.

        • Anonymous

          Are the names that you mentioned what the ‘progname=’ calls them? (I just want to make sure I have the right name for them before adding them to the blacklist) I’m pretty sure I put ‘firefox’ on the list already, or are you just confirming firefox doesn’t work? With smplayer, you can’t blacklist it because the program name is unknown, but you can change the theme in options->preferences, then Interface, and set the style to something different.

          • Anonymous

            Firefox and swiftfox give firefox-bin and swiftfox-bin as the prognames. (Although I’m using firefox 3.6, but I don’t know if that would make a difference)

            This is basically what I’ve added to the line and it seems to have fixed those programs including flash:

            :checkgmail:gloobus-preview:exe:firefox-bin:swiftfox-bin

            Also smplayer now looks normal again :) thanks.

  • ely

    tried it… the only transparent is the inactive window border, also, all the inactive windows are blurred. i also do not have the blur filter dropdown from gnome color chooser. instead i have a horizontal scroll bar with values 0, 1, 2

    somebody help, i really want to have the same in screenshots

    • Anonymous

      The blur should be in CompizConfig Settings Manager, not gnome-color-chooser. What happens when you run ‘echo $GTK_MODULES’ in a terminal? If it doesn’t have rgba in the result, you probably don’t have gtk2-module-rgba installed, or didn’t log out and back in. If it has rgba in the result, what does it say when you run ‘gcalctool’ from the terminal?

      • ely

        echoing $GTK_MODULES gives me “canberra-gtk-module”
        running gcalctool in the terminal outputs:
        Gtk-Message: Failed to load module “gnomenu-panel”: libgnomenu-panel.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

        • Anonymous

          You probably don’t have gtk2-module-rgba installed, or didn’t log out and back in.

  • Anonymous

    Why would anyone want this? :P I dont liek transparent windows, when i’m using a window i dont need to look behind it… And when i want to see all my windows at once i just use the compiz plugin for tiling.

  • Chris Lees

    This is pretty impressive. Windows Vista/7 require programs to be patched or partially rewritten to gain RGBA. Mac OS X doesn’t seem to do it at all.

    Yes there are problems (anyone else notice that the background behind the “Unlock Screen” dialog is semi-transparent? Partly defeats the purpose of locking your screen!) but it’s a great thing to hold over Windows users. I’m sure once this is default it’ll do as much to bring across Windows users as Compiz once did :-)

  • Chris Lees

    This is pretty impressive. Windows Vista/7 require programs to be patched or partially rewritten to gain RGBA. Mac OS X doesn’t seem to do it at all.

    Yes there are problems (anyone else notice that the background behind the “Unlock Screen” dialog is semi-transparent? Partly defeats the purpose of locking your screen!) but it’s a great thing to hold over Windows users. I’m sure once this is default it’ll do as much to bring across Windows users as Compiz once did :-)

  • Chris Lees

    If you use Gnome-Mplayer (or potentially any GTK-based video player apart from Totem, which doesn’t have any transparency) you need to switch its video output to X11. Unfortunately, VDPAU and Xv don’t seem to work with RGBA.

  • Chris Lees

    If you use Gnome-Mplayer (or potentially any GTK-based video player apart from Totem, which doesn’t have any transparency) you need to switch its video output to X11. Unfortunately, VDPAU and Xv don’t seem to work with RGBA.

  • Floopy1962

    sudo aptitude upgrade ??? that f**k-up my friend pc… every time i install ubuntu (EVERY TIME) then install drivers for my video… synaptic and aptitude want to install every xorg server and i ignor him and lock versions from synaptic… the comand “apt-get upgrade” install him :P so funny :) now can someone tell me what to do with my friend ubuntu karmic linux 2.6.31.22 he can past from login screen xserver restart again and again:? someone?

  • theologica

    For some odd reason, this just causes issues for my computer. While I can login, I end up with a blank screen over the desktop (except for the toolbar) and the blank thing hides any opened windows. I am currently in the process of trying to fix stuff — doing backups right now in case I need to actually *reinstall* everything — but I am curious as to why this is.