geek + red sox + cooking = peter ryan

After a few weeks of trying Compiz Fusion on my Kubuntu Gutsy laptop I have returned to using the standard KWin window manager. My reasons for this were:

• Buggy decorators. After running for a short period of time with compiz the windows decorators (maximum, minimize, close, resize, etc) stopped appearing.
• Tray icons not loading correctly. When I booted my laptop and immediately logged in a few of the system tray icons (PowerManager for one) would not load in the tray but instead be running on the top left of the screen. Restoring to kwin would cause this issue to go away.
• Occasionally on login the keyboard would not be functional. This was resolvable by logging out with the mouse and logging back in.

Overall I liked the effects but couldn’t handle the issues and not being a kde developer didn’t feel like sifting through bug reports and trying to tinker with the window manager. I setup my compiz fusion configuration according to the help.ubuntu.com’s instructions.

Today I was experimenting with Advanced Desktop Effects for Kubuntu Gutsy. I set them up easily enough. I first removed everything I had installed before (legacy beryl) and reinstalled CompizFusion according to the ubuntu help documentation.

Everything installed fine but I ran into a troubling issue. I was looking at the list of activated plugins and trying to get a handle on everything (including what the super key is…I still have no idea but I’ll figure it out soon enough) and after playing with the “Move window plugin” which was tied to ALT-F7 I said “that is cool but I’ll never use it…I’ll just drag the window around with my mouse” and disabled it.

Anyway that behavior was opposite of what I was expecting. The compiz desktop effect was also the base move window action so disabling it made it impossible to move any windows at all. I re-enabled it and moving windows (with the mouse) once again worked as expected.

I suspect that other effect “plugins” behave similarly so when playing with desktop effects be careful what you disable! IMHO a window manager’s core functionality includes things like “move window” “resize window” and treating them like plugins as opposed to core elements is an extreme that could lead an unaware user down a road that disables features that one might view as critical. That said there are things like “Application Switcher”, “Ring Switcher”, and “Shift Swticher” all of which are different ways to switch between windows. So I guess one could deliver an alternate “Move Window plugin.”