KWin

KWin

KWin (pronounce "kwin") is the window manager for the KDE desktop workspace. It gives you complete control over your windows, making sure they're not in the way but aid you in your task. It paints the windowdecoration, the bar on top of every window with (configurable) buttons like close, maximize and minimize. It also handles placing of windows and switching between them.

Compositing

KWin supports compositing, which means using 3D effects for handling your windows. This can make windowmanagement smoother, easier, more efficient and more natural. It’s hardware requirements are very modest and pretty much every reasonably modern system since 2002 supports it. There are still some issues with certain hardware, more info about that can be found on techbase

New in KDE 4.2

Click with your right mouse button on a window decoration or use SystemSettings to access the new and easier configuration of KWin. Here you can enable effects to more efficiently manage your windows. You can for example use the "Present Windows" as the effect for "window switching". Instead of showing you icons or very small previews of your applications, it arranges them in a grid so you can quickly choose the right one. Just use the "ALT-TAB" keysequence and keep the ALT key pressed. You can now use tab to switch through the windows or just activate the right one using the mouse. Hitting "ALT-TAB" keys quickly will show you the next window in the que, just like it used to.

Employing motion physics, KWin provides your windows with a more natural feel. New desktop effects like the "Cube" desktop switcher and "Magic Lamp" minimize animation have been added. Improvements in the existing effects make window management smoother than ever. KWin has seen many performance improvements to enable these effects even on low-end hardware. Elaborate checks have been build in to ensure users with low-end hardware are not presented with an unusable setup. KWin detects the capabilities of the hardware and if needed gracefully scales its effects down. You can take control and disable these checks or change settings like the global animation speed to finetune your experience. When your computer is under heavy load, KWin will automatically disable the compositing temporarily to keep things running smoothly. It will notify you if it does so, and you can re-enable compositing by pressing "SHIFT+ALT+F12". Finally, support for multiple screen handling has been improved in KWin using the new Kephal library. You can move maximized windows between Xinerama screens and the addition of external screens is handled correctly.

More information about what's new in KDE 4.2 can be found at the following links:

developer blog

kwin movie

Hints & Tips

You want an application to launch in the same screen position every time

Sometimes the screen position of an application is vital to your comfort, so use the flexibility of kwin to make sure it's always where you want it.

Position the window where you want it to open, then right-click on the title-bar, choosing Advanced > Special Window Settings. This will open a settings window, with appropriate entries already made. All you need to do now is select the Geometry tab and check Position and Size. OK - you're finished!