Mutter is the window manager for GNOME. It is not invoked directly, but from GNOME Session (on a machine with a hardware accelerated video driver).
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the book.
Download (HTTP): https://download.gnome.org/sources/mutter/42/mutter-42.4.tar.xz
Download (FTP): ftp://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gnome/sources/mutter/42/mutter-42.4.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 18b6f716ba0f6b899ed2edb08ab4ca68
Download size: 2.6 MB
Estimated disk space required: 130 MB (without tests)
Estimated build time: 0.5 SBU (Using parallelism=4)
gnome-settings-daemon-42.2, graphene-1.10.8, libxcvt-0.1.2, libxkbcommon-1.4.1, pipewire-0.3.58, and Zenity-3.42.1
desktop-file-utils-0.26, gobject-introspection-1.74.0, startup-notification-0.12, and sysprof-3.44.0
libinput-1.21.0, Wayland-1.21.0, wayland-protocols-1.26, and Xwayland-22.1.3. Additionally, GTK+-3.24.34 needs to be built with Wayland support.
dbusmock-0.28.4 (required for tests) and Xorg-Server-21.1.4 (for X11 sessions)
User Notes: https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/mutter
Install Mutter by running the following commands:
mkdir build && cd build && meson --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release -Dtests=false .. && ninja
The test suite requires debug functions to be enabled in the build,
and an external program called xvfb-run. If you wish to run the
tests, you should download and install it before running
meson. You can obtain
it from xvfb-run,
and install it with executable permissions in /usr/bin. xvfb-run needs Xvfb at runtime, and Xvfb can be installed from either
Xorg-Server-21.1.4 or Xwayland-22.1.3. You should also replace
--buildtype=release
-Dtests=false in the meson command, with --buildtype=debugoptimized
-Dtests=true. The test suite requires the mutter schema
to be installed on the system, so it is better to run the tests
after installing the package.
You can also test basic functions of Mutter following the section called “Starting Mutter”, after installing it.
Now, as the root user:
ninja install
The tests can now be run: issue ninja
test. The tests require an active X or wayland
session. The native-unit is known to
fail. A lot of tests will fail if the opengl rendering is not done
in hardware.
--buildtype=release:
Specify a buildtype suitable for stable releases of the package, as
the default may produce unoptimized binaries.
-Dtests=false: Prevents
building the tests, and removes a hard requirement on xvfb-run.
-Dprofiler=false: Use this option if
Sysprof is not installed, and you
don't want meson to download Sysprof source code.
Mutter is normally used as a component of gnome-shell, but it can be used as a standalone Wayland compositor too. To run Mutter as a Wayland compositor, in a virtual console, issue:
mutter --wayland -- vte-2.91
Replace vte-2.91 with the command line for the first application you want in the Wayland session. Note that once this application exits, the Wayland session will be terminated.
Mutter can also function as a nested compositor in another Wayland session. In a terminal emulator, issue:
MUTTER_DEBUG_DUMMY_MODE_SPECS=1920x1080 mutter --wayland --nested -- vte-2.91
Replace 1920x1080 with
the size you want for the nested Wayland session.