A lot people read and enjoyed our previous article, "From the archives: the best distros of 2000", so we had a hunt around in the dark, damp cellar where old copies of Linux Format magazine live, and dug up another gem, this time from issue 2: a group test of the best window managers, complete with screenshots.

The Linux community has come up with a bunch of new technologies to bring the UI eye candy on Linux to the next level…following the path of a well established player : Apple with its 8 years old compositing window manager Quartz.

In GNOME 2.22, included in Ubuntu 8.04, the default Metacity window manager has compositing built in. This means that you can get your eye candy effects without switching window managers!

Yes! guys and gals, our beloved window manager is kicking ass in composite land. There’s a new branch on metacity subversion were developers are working on composite features for metacity. So far we have, transparency, shadow and ALT+tab Godness, and now that I’m running a composite WM i can use the nice MAC OS X like dock bar, AWN. All this without the lag (and CPU masacre) introduced in compiz-fusion when scrolling applications.

This is a pretty simple guide to installing Looking Glass, a 3D window manager alternative to Compiz Fusion, for Debian Linux.