I installed Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Edition, which uses the GNOME 2 Desktop Environment with the GNOME Classic shell. It comes with Compiz 0.8.6 pre-installed, so I can install and configure the bleeding-edge version of Compiz through Git.
After I moved from Ubuntu 11.10 to 10.10, I really enjoyed the GNOME Classic session with Cairo-dock and Compiz, but I still miss the simplicity of Unity.
However, one of the dependencies of Unity is Compiz 0.9.6 (I am also aware that I can download Unity Netbook edition, but it would be not practical installing it on a laptop). This means if I want to use Unity 4.22.0, I need to update Compiz, which I do not want to do because I want to use the unsupported Compiz plugins which only work on Compiz 0.8.6.
Is there a way around this? Can I download Unity as a separate session without breaking Compiz 0.8.6?
Best Answer
No is the simple answer - Unity in 11.10 utilises much of the Compiz rewritten code in 0.9.6. Indeed, a large majority of Unity consists of a Compiz specific plugin for v0.9.6. You will need to rewrite this to use Compiz 0.8.6.
It also has major dependencies upon the GTK+3 library set.