Comment 8 for bug 1293384

Yeah, there is no way to just drop /usr/bin/compiz from 12.04 onto a 14.04 install. It simply will not work due to plugin mismatches, etc.

One way to see if 3d is enabled is to run /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p and see the output. If it says "Not software rendered: no" then the effects are turned off.

I did an experiment by setting nomodeset=1 in the kernel command line for both 12.04 and 14.04. This enabled llvmpipe on the machine and in 12.04, the nice Unity2d was running, but as Marco said that was deprecated since 12.10. On 14.04, it's the software rendered Compiz+Unity3d which pales in comparison to Unity2d. This is because all of the OpenGL rendering is done in the CPU which is not very efficient at these tasks. When I ran this on 14.04 (bare metal mind you), I'm guessing the frame rate is ~20 fps w/ very high CPU usage when dragging a window around. Even scrolling up and down in Firefox produces lower frame rates and high CPU usage.

There really isn't anything we can do in Compiz and Unity3d to help this anymore than what we already do as Marco suggested. What would help is a VMWare kernel module that virtualizes the GPU in Linux.