It is common to have two equally separated windows by either dragging each window to one side of the screen or Ctrl+Super+←/→, but I want to divide my screen into four quarters.
I have encounterd many situations in which I had to switch windows between three or four. It would be sometimes easier to debug any code if I could have a screen with four equally divided windows so that I could see the entire system with one look.
When I open my system monitor and check the "processes" tab, I've noticed that regardless of what other apps I have running, "compiz" is always taking roughly 10% of my CPU. It might be a broad question, but what is compiz? I understand it's a window manager, but is it possible to use ubuntu without it? Is it a default application?
I have been following the updates that appear every week in how they affect the performance and resource usage of Compiz since I installed 11.10 (Right now I am testing 12.04 and 14.04). For what I have seen, the CPU and memory usage have lowered (specially memory). I am comparing installing 12.04/14.04 without any updates and then applying all updates and also comparing 12.04 to 14.04. For example nautilus is using less than 35 MB (For me it was between 70 MB and 150 MB doing the same activities with it several versions ago).
Other processes have also received some kind of optimizations which have lowered my total memory usage from around 850 MB to 610 MB (I also use services like Apache, MySQL, etc..) but after all of this time, the only one that has stayed almost the same is Compiz. It still uses more than 100MB to start. Only using the desktop with Unity and no other programs running, it takes (right now) 133 MB. What options can I use to lower the memory footprint WITHOUT compromising the stability of Unity (For example removing the OpenGL plugin from Compiz config is a BAD idea).
What optimizations can be done to lower the memory usage of Compiz?
NOTE - I have Compiz Config Settings Manager (CCSM) installed already.
On Mac OS X, there is a handy key combo for taking a screenshot of any arbitrary rectangle section of the screen(Command-Shift-4).
Is there something similar(maybe Compiz plugin) for Ubuntu/Gnome?
I want to tell compiz, metacity, the gnome-terminal or whoever is in charge to open the terminal window maximized by default.
How can I do that?
EDIT for the future: most of the answers were upvoted in older ubuntu versions, since 17.10 and on the most upvoted solutions do not work.