KDE desktop effects

[Marko Vojinovic]

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