Install Emerald Theme Manager on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

Emerald is beautiful window decorator which has a lot of fans back then. Unfortunately, Emerald is not included in Ubuntu Oneiric repositories so you can not easily. So, today I'd like to show you how to install Emerald on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot both compiling via sources and installing via PPA. Before we jump, please take a look at a sample of Emerald Window Decorator theme (image via: WebUpd8)

Installing from source
Let's jump into our first method "Installing from sources". I found this method yesterday on Ubuntuforums.org, so please refers to the appropriate thread for further information.
Open the Terminal and type the following command to install applications and tools for compiling Emerald from sources:

• sudo apt-get install git autoconf libtool libwnck1.0-cil-dev libwnck-dev intltool libdecoration0-dev

Once installed, you must download the Emerald source and patche to work on Unity (Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10), compile and then install it. Those steps can be done by typing the following commands:

• wget http://cgit.compiz.org/fusion/decorators/emerald/snapshot/emerald-0.9.4.tar.gz
• tar -xf emerald-0.9.4.tar.gz
• cd emerald-0.9.4
• cd src
• rm main.c
• wget http://www.learn-digital.com/ubuntu/emerald-0.9.4/src/main.c
• cd ..
• ./autogen.sh && make clean && make distclean && ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && gksu make install

Installing via PPA
Thanks to Andrew @WebUpd8 who provides PPA for Emerald so we can install it easily on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Type the following command to install Emerald via PPA:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install emerald

Once Emerald installed on your system, please select a theme from Emerald Theme Manager and activate by typing:

• emerald --replace

To have Emerald run at startup you must configure it via CompizConfig Settings Manager a.k.a CCSM. Have not installed CCSM yet? Type this command:

• sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then open CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM), on the left pane select "Window Decoration" plugin and under "Command", enter: "emerald --replace".

Regards.