SizeUp behaviour using Compiz

Recently I found out about SizeUp in OSX and found it really useful. Basically it gives you hot keys for window positions, such that you can maximise them vertically and attach them to the left or right of the screen. Great for placing terminal windows and browsers. This is similar to the behaviour in Windows 7 (don’t know what they call it or care, they are just copying this stuff from existing window managers and getting all the credit). You can also send a window to a corner, or maximise horizontally and attach to top/bottom.

I knew it must be possible in linux somehow. For one thing, there’s wmctrl, a command line program for scripting window positions and I found some scripts made by others in the Ubuntu forums that act similar to the way I wanted.

However, it turns out there is something already available if you’re using Compiz as your display manager.

To change to using Compiz and get the required config tool, run:

And then open the menu System → Preferences → Appearance. Go to the Visual Effects tab and choose “Extra”.

Then fire up the CompizConfig Settings Manager that’s also under System → Preferences. When the dialog loads, go to the filter and type “grid”. This is the module of Compiz that gives you almost the same behaviour as SizeUp (you can get the rest of the behaviour using other modules in the “Window Management” category.