Hi everyone!
Every time a new Fedora comes out, when I install it I try to spend some time evaluating the progress of kwin desktop effects, in the hope that they will eventually become feature-full enough to replace compiz (for my particular usecase, that is).
So now I have tried them in F13 (clean install from KDE LiveCD and fully updated), and I have several questions:
* Is there a way to put a background behind the cube in the desktop cube effect (in compiz this is called "skydome")?
* Is there a way to configure the amount of elevation of windows when they are configured to hover outside the cube? Currently they are way to far away from the cube surface, and it doesn't look nice.
* Is there a way to include mouse buttons as a keyboard-shortcut action? For example, I would like to have the desktop cube effect activated not with the usual ctrl+f11 combination, but with ctrl+alt+left-mouse-button (as I did in compiz). Mouse buttons do not seem to be accepted in the shortcut dialogs.
* I typically use 8 desktops, which kwin has arranged into a 2x4 grid. How can I rearrange this into a 1x8 grid? I don't want to switch desktops up and down, only left and right.
* I want to switch desktops when hitting the left/right screen edge, but not when hitting top/bottom screen edge. How can this be configured? Also, is there a way to customize the size of "screen corner" versus "screen edge"? I have a "present windows" effect active in upper-left corner, which works perfectly when edge desktop switching is disabled. But if I enable it and put the mouse into a corner, the desktop switching kicks in rather then the present windows effect, and I cannot seem to hit the very corner with the mouse that easily. So it would be a good idea to customize how "big" is the corner supposed to be.
* Is there any equivalent of the "ring switcher" from compiz? That is, window thumbnails displayed in a ring (circle or ellipse), and rotate when alt-tab is being pressed...
* Is there a possibility to draw window borders which one can grab with the mouse and have the window fold like a sheet of paper (this makes sense only when window is maximized)? This is a feature of Emerald window decorator in compiz, haven't seen it anywhere else. Kwin doesn't seem to have an option of drawing window borders at all, for maximized windows.
* Is there a possibility to download/install extra effects, which are not included in the default install with F13 (do any extra effects exist)?
Overall, I've seen a lot of improvement in desktop effects compared to F11 and F12, but it is still not as configurable as compiz. If anyone can answer any of the above questions, I'll try to stick with kwin some more and explore it, otherwise I'll just fall back to compiz/emerald again and wait for F14.
Any suggestions welcome! ;-)
:-) Marko