In this Ghacks article I am going to show you a few tips and tricks to help you get around some of the minor glitches associated with KDE 4.5. Hopefully you are one of the lucky users not experiencing problems. If, however, you are hopefully these tips will help you out.

Compositing crashes desktop

If you have an Intel-based graphics chipset you will find that anytime you enable compositing with KDE 4.5 your desktop is going to crash. This is because the Blur plugin does not yet support Intel chipsets. You can resolve this issue by simply disabling the Blur plugin. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on Start > Computer > System Settings
2. Go to Workspace Appearance and Behavior >  Desktop Effects > All Effects
3. Uncheck Blur
4. Enable or start compositing

Now you shouldn’t have any issue with compositing crashing your desktop.

Image previews not showing up on desktop

Image previews are a handy feature that keep you from having to open up an image to see what it is (that is, if you don’t remember it by name). In 4.5 this feature seems to have gone missing. To fix this, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the desktop and click on Folder View Settings
2. Navigate to the Location menu
3. Select Specify a Folder
4. Point the specified folder to /home/USERNAME/Desktop Where USERNAME is your actual username.

That’s it. NOTE: If your shortcuts no longer display their individual icons, you will have to also navigate to Display > Previews > More Previews and uncheck the Text files option.

Desktop seems a little sluggish

You might find your desktop a wee bit sluggish for your taste. This can easily be resolved by upping the speed of the desktop animations. This is done by:

1. Click Start > Computer > System Settings.
2. Workspace Appearance and Behavior >  Desktop Effects.
3. At the bottom of this page change the Animations speed from Normal to Fast.

That should speed things up a bit.

Show applications by Name

I’m not sure why the KDE developers decided to show applications by description instead of name in the menus. To me, this is a bit counter-intuitive. Fortunately, it’s very easy to change back to the standard view mode. To do this right-click the “K” (or Start) menu button and select Application Launcher Settings. In this new window check the box for Show Applications By Name. Click OK and this setting will immediately take affect.

Final thoughts

KDE 4.5 has come a long, long way from its humble beginnings. But even now little glitches are showing up. I hope these tips have helped you get around some of the problems you have found. If not, report the problems you are having an hopefully we can find a solution.

But there are certain advanced configurations that I want to illustrate that might not be as obvious to the new-to-Xfce user. This time around we’re talking about the Window Manager Tweaks tool.

First off – what is a Window Manager

That question is simple to explain, but must be explained so you know what exactly this tool works with. A window manager is the piece of the desktop puzzle in charge of drawing, decorating, and manipulating the windows you see. So that pretty boarder around Firefox you see – that is handled by the Window Manager. In the case of Xfce the window manager is xfwm.

The Window Manager Tweaks tool does just what you would expect – tweaks the Xfce window manager. In what way does it tweak it? The broader picture looks like this:

• Cycling: How you want to cycle through your open windows.
• Focus: How you want window focus to be handled.
• Accessibility: How you access your windows.
• Workspaces: How you access your workspaces.
• Placement: Smart placement.
• Compositor: If you want to use compositing and how you want it used.

Now, let’s take a look at each of these more closely.

Cycling

With this feature you can configure four settings. Of these only one will not be set by default: Cycle through windows on all workspaces. This option can be useful if you deal with a lot of workspaces. If you enable this option all open windows will be included in the cycling process. If you do not include it, only those windows on the current working workspace will be included. I prefer to enable this option.

Focus

This is not the same as the standard window manager settings where you can enable such features as “focus follows mouse”. In fact the features in this tab either do not really work all that well or have no practical use. Even though Focus stealing prevention is a good idea, only applications that follow the _NET_WM_USER_TIME standard will adhere to this feature.

Accessibility

The best feature in this tab is the Key used to grab and move windows. When you press the configured key you can click anywhere on a window and drag that window around. Another nice feature in this tab is the Hide frame of windows when maximized. Although the space gained isn’t much, by losing the window frame you have a much closer to “full screen” effect without losing your titlebar.

Workspaces

From this tab I like to set Use the mouse wheel on the desktop to switch workspaces. This means I do not have to drag my mouse all the way down to the pager to switch workspaces. There is also two wrapping features you might want to set:

Wrap works spaces depending on the actual desktop layout: Wrapping workspaces means you can take a window and drag it to the left or right to move it to the next adjacent workspace.

Wrap workspaces when the first or last workspace is reached: If you have four workspaces and you drag a window to workspace four, in order to get that window back to workspace 1 all you need to do is continue dragging to the right. So the left edge of workspace 1 is adjacent to the right edge of workspace four (or your first and last if you have more than four).

Placement

There is a really nice feature in this tab called Smart Placement. You can set it so that windows open either always in the center of your screen or centered on your cursor. Add this to the mouse menu (right click anywhere on the desktop) where you can start an application without having to go to the start button and you can dictate where all of your windows are to open.

Compositor

This feature, of course, is only available to those with the hardware to support compositing. If you’ve read me enough you know I am a big fan of compositing. In this tab you can set the opacity of:

• Window decorations.
• Inactive windows.
• Windows during move.
• Windows during resize.
• Popup windows.

From this tab you can also set shadows for:

• Regular windows.
• Popup windows.
• Dock windows.

Final thoughts

As you can see, Xfce 4 has started to really challenge the big boys in features. Add to that the lighter footprint and lightning fast speed and you have the makings of an outstanding replacement for either KDE or GNOME.

Now I will warn you that I am a fan of GNOME. I understand that KDE did the same thing when they re-invented their take on the desktop. The difference is – the innovation from KDE seemed more like a “retooling with added features”. GNOME 3 will be a milestone for the desktop. I have head some people say it is too much like the “iPhone interface”. To those I have to say “use it first”. But no matter where you stand, GNOME 3 is going to be different, and this article will show you how to install it and give you a first glance.

Another preface

I must say that what you are going to see is actually the newest GNOME Shell…which will be the driving force behind GNOME 3. But what is GNOME Shell? To put it simply, GNOME Shell is in charge of things like switching windows and switching applications. In a way, GNOME Shell will be the window manager of GNOME (Currently that job is tasked to Metacity), but will also take over the task of compositing (currently handled by Compiz).

You should also know that GNOME Shell is very much in development. GNOME 3 is due out in September of 2010 and the development is going on strong. So when trying to experience what GNOME 3 will offer, remember it’s likely it will crash (although I have yet to experience a single crash) and many features are yet to be included.

The look

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows what GNOME 3 will most likely look like. What you are seeing is the desktop with the Activities menu open. When you open this menu all of your open windows thumbnail to make room. The new “menu” is broken up into Applications, Places & Devices, and Recent Items. This makes accessing your most used (or most recently used) items faster. Of course, as I said, this is missing features that will find their way into the full release.

The installation

Now for the rough part. Getting GNOME Shell installed and running isn’t easy and it doesn’t always work (no matter how well you follow the steps). My installation is done on a clean Ubuntu 10.4 distribution. The painless way to install is to follow these steps:

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

If you are lucky, once the installation is complete, you can hit <Alt>F2 and then type gnome-shell –replace. If you ARE lucky you will happily see GNOME Shell take the place of your current desktop. If you are not lucky, you will wind up with an error or two. If you are not lucky you will have to jump through some hoops – those hoops being:

1. sudo apt-get install jhbuild
2. wget http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-shell/plain/tools/build/gnome-shell-build-setup.sh
3. bash gnome-shell-build-setup.sh
4. jhbuild build

If this completes, try the gnome-shell –replace command again and cross your fingers. Hopefully by now you have a running GNOME Shell instance and can start to appreciate where the GNOME developers are heading.

Final thoughts

On another site I work for I proclaimed the challenge to finally re-invent the desktop metaphor to be over (with GNOME being the clear winner). For this I was shot down from all angles. But I stand behind my claims that GNOME will have on their hands the most useful, elegant desktop on any PC anywhere.

The simplest method to get a composit manager installed is to install Compiz. Compiz is an outstanding window manager all on its own that is, by default, ready for compositing. With Compiz installed you will have a composit manager that E16 can deal with already installed.

In Ubuntu if you issue the command sudo synaptic you will open up the Add/Remove Software application. From here do a search for compiz. When the results come up select compiz and allow the system to install all necessary dependencies. Finally click Apply to install all of the packages.

Once Compiz is installed you should be able to set compositing up in Enlightenment. With a right mouse click the Settings menu will appear. Select “Composite Settings” to open up the configuration window.

Composite Settings

Once the settings window opens you will see a few configuration options to choose from.

Composite Settings Window

The first option to take care of is Enable Composite. Make sure that is checked. The rest of the options are all up to user taste.  I prefer to have  Fading Speed set to slowest (slider to the far left), Shadows Blurred, Default Unfocused Window Opacity near 1/2, and Default Pop-Up Window Opacity around 3/4 on. Once you have selected these options click Apply to set them.

The final effect can be pretty amazing for just a “simple window manager”.

The full effect

Final Thoughts

What I love about Enlightenment is that it is a lightweight desktop that manages to pull off enough tricks to impress yet doesn’t drag your machine to a halt. With a little hackery, Enlightenment can make Windows Aero look like a sad attempt at a modern desktop.