Slow alt-tab in Linux Mint(Ubuntu) with Gnome fix

I’m Extremely happy with Linux Mint just a couple last things that I needed to fix that were bugging me and finally got to the

Linux Mint: From Freedom Came Elegance

bottom of them tonight.

My biggest problem was with alt-tab and I was having problems with it not appearing immediately. Every time I went into alt-tab to switch windows it would take about a second for the windows to appear.  Also, once I had selected a window it would take another half second to switch to that window.  I roughly know the order of my windows but most of the time I’d like to see which window I want to go to.

I believe it has something to do with my video card, it’s an onboard intel card that doesn’t support compiz which means all of those settings are useless in the control center. I tried changing all of the settings in the Compiz settings manager to see if that would make a difference but no luck.

Finally found the solution by disabling gnome compositing, this might only be a problem with Mint since it’s in a special Mint configuration area, not sure. This does have some drawbacks as you are disabling compositing but I’d rather have a normal functioning alt-tab.

Go into Control Center -> Click mintDesktop(under look and feel) -> Click the “Gnome Compositing” tab -> Uncheck the “Gnome Compositing” checkbox -> Click “Apply”

If those instructions don’t work for you or you aren’t on Mint and are still getting the problem then check out the following links for alternate solutions:

• Enable Metacity Compositing in GNOME 2.22
• MetaCity Compositing