Switching from Metacity to Xfwm4 in GDM

GDM is pretty bulletproof, and is a great way to manage your display and provide autologin services for your desktop. Unfortunately GDM loads Metacity, and unless your running Gnome it can be a hit to your memory cache. For those of us using Xfce4, its not the most efficient way to handle resources.

The Xubuntu developers put together a gdm theme that will load xfwm4 instead of Metacity. To take advantage of this little boost in preformance, install the following package:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-gdm-theme

Unfortunately for us running a lean version of Ubuntu or Xubuntu, the theme needs a little help beyond just installing the theme:

sudo rm -f /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/metacity.desktop

When GDM gets an update, you may have to remove that file again. I haven't played with it enough to figure out how to disable it permanently, if anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate it! Just post them in the comments section.