After Nigel Tao appeared to stop maintaining superswitcher (introduced below), I continued to use it (from ca 2012 on), and make necessary adjustments to that it compiles on newer distributions. The result is shared on https://github.com/fidergo-stephane-gourichon/superswitcher.

The document below and the code here were published by Nigel Tao on https://github.com/nigeltao/superswitcher before being adjusted.

SuperSwitcher is a (more feature-ful) replacement for the Alt-Tab window switching behavior and Ctrl-Alt-Left/Right/Up/Down workspace switching behavior that is currently provided by Metacity.

See original README file.

(TODO move content here, rearrange for clarity.)

Prefix here is the directory where things will be installed.

It can be a dedicated directory, which has the benefit that uninstalling is little more than removing the whole directory altogether.

PREFIX=~/any/persistent/directory/where/you/can/write

If you don't know what to pick, you can use ~/.local. It is probably standards-compliant, although I'm not sure to what extent.

PREFIX=~/.local/

Anyway, after setting PREFIX to what you want, do this:

./autogen.sh --prefix="${PREFIX:?}"

make

After that, you can run src/superswitcher immediately for a test.

Previous step, plus:c

make install

SuperSwitcher is best enjoyed if you automatically start the program whenever you log in.

Assuming you use a XDG-compliant desktop environment (pretty much any, noawadays).

It is best to use your desktop environment's tools but this should work perfectly:

cp -f --backup=numbered "${PREFIX:?}"/share/applications/SuperSwitcher.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

(Remember to have PREFIX defined in the shell you use.)

rm ~/.config/autostart/SuperSwitcher.desktop

To build for a system-level install as root:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make

After that, you can run src/superswitcher immediately for a user-level test.

sudo make install

Assuming you use a XDG-compliant desktop environment (pretty much any, noawadays).

sudo cp -f --backup=numbered /usr/local/share/applications/SuperSwitcher.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/

sudo rm /etc/xdg/autostart/SuperSwitcher.desktop

From this repository tree, you can easily build your own binary package for Ubuntu or Debian, using the supplied recompile_local_debian_package.sh script. If that doesn't work it's a bug and I'll be happy to hear about it.

You probably needs something like this:

sudo apt install build-essential dpkg-dev
bash recompile_local_debian_package.sh

The script will output a list of generated files, including a .deb file which is the compiled binary package, which you can install with e.g. sudo dpkg --install /full/path/to/superswitcher_0.9.2-1_amd64.deb.

See original README file.