Gnome 2.26 packages are slowly entering Debian unstable, and at one time my desktop stopped starting compiz after login, but instead default Gnome window manager metacity would start. So my method of selecting window manager by putting WINDOW_MANAGER="compiz" in .gnomerc definitely stopped working. Further inspection revealed that now window manager can be selected only by setting relevant gconf key to some value.


gconftool -t string -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager compiz

I probably don't need to mention how lame this is for a modern desktop environment and how it reminds me of some other OS where you spend most of your time running cryptic commands like this to tweak stuff. But, that's the official way now, at least according to the tip in /usr/share/doc/gnome-session/README.Debian.