How to determine which composite manager is running

compositecomptonmutter

I'm using Arch Linux, and have both Gnome and the i3 window manager installed. When running i3, I'm trying to initiate the composite manager Compton. But trying to do so results in the following error:

$ compton
[ 04/11/2019 22:32:36.443 register_cm FATAL ERROR ] Another composite manager is already running

I think this means that Compton is already running, or Mutter is running, but I'm not sure which.

Is there a command I can use to determine which composite manager is currently running?

Best Answer

You can use inxi. 

inxi -Gxx | grep compositor

The output looks like this

           alternate: ati,fbdev compositor: compton resolution: <xdpyinfo missing>

and you can see that Compton is currently being used as a compositor. With no compositor, there is no grep match.

Switches:

  • -G Show graphics info (card(s), driver, display protocol (if available), display server, resolution, renderer, OpenGL version).
  • -xx Show extra, extra data. (with -G, show chip vendor:product ID for each video card; OpenGL compatibility version; compositor (experimental); alternate Xorg drivers.
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