I have an HP Pavilion DM3 (graphics is nVidia GeForce G105M), running Debian Squeeze with GNOME 2.30.

My preference for DE is Gnome + Metacity + Nautilus. I'd like to use Docky, but it requires compositing. So I'm looking for a relatively "light" compositing manager. I realise that "light" is ambiguous, but I basically want something that won't chew through my notebook's batteries because of CPU or GPU usage.

I know that Metacity is capable of compositing, but as far as I'm aware it's still testing. Some people report that it's smooth and lightweight, others claim that it eats up processor time. I've also seen references to a problem with nVidia, but no actual details.

I'm not averse to Compiz, but I haven't used it before and I don't know what to expect in terms of "weight." And maybe there's something else I haven't heard of.

So can anyone recommend anything? Or dispel my idea that Metacity is not the right tool for the job?

(Originally posted on GNOME forums.)