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View Full Version : New to Compiz-Fusion. Q: multiple desktops?


jbuckley2004
October 15th, 2007, 07:02 PM
Hi - I've been searching for two days, and came up empty on this question. Pardons if it's been answered and I just missed it.

Newly installed Mandriva 2008 offers Compiz-Fusion out of the box. It works (seemingly) fine with my GeForce NVidia 5200 and NVidia 100.14.19 (I think - I'm not home to check) driver, from KDE.

Initially, I thought I was seeing the icons for 4 desktops on the taskbar, but it didn't take long to realize that the display was for 4 sides of a cube, all for 1 desktop. This became apparent to me when the wall paper for desktop 1 was applied to all four sides.

When I used configure-desktops to have more than one desktop (say, 2), I saw 8 icons on the taskbar, presumably to select any one of 8 sides of the two cubes for the two desktops I selected. That was what I expected.

Except, the second set of 4 (labled 5-8, btw), always took me to the four sides of the first desktop. Although I could change the wallpaper of desktop 2 and do any other configuration on it that I wanted, I could not see it, or go to any representation of that desktop. Any application opened on #1 also rotated to the front if I selected #5 on the taskbar.

Is there an option setting somewhere that would allow me to distinguish between 1-4 and 5-8 as if they were separate KDE desktops? Or is this a limititation of Compiz-Fusion?
Thanks

Later edit - I found how to manipulate the number of "vertical" and "horizontal" size from the Compiz Config settings manager, but the problem remains. Essentially, the vertical size parameter doesn't seem to be working (horizonal does work as expected). Although the number of icons for each face of the n-sided cubes in the task bar is correct, only the first set (corresponding to the horizontal size) do anything. I can create more than one desk top, and even move apps there. But if I do that I can no long get to them until I return the number of desktops to 1.


All this is very confusing. Am I missing some elementary configuration that lets me have more than one desktop?
Thanks again

Fyda
October 16th, 2007, 09:18 AM
While I don't know KDE well enough to offer a solution, I suspect this is related to the Desktop Cube plugin not supporting multiple rows (as defined by the vertical virtual size). The behaviour you described also happens outside of KDE when there is more than one row of viewports. This is due to the "cube" being designed for viewports arranged in just one row, without any way to switch vertically between viewports.

The Expo plugin, however, supports this quite well; have you tried using that? It should zoom out and show all the viewports, as well as allow you to switch between them. In conjunction with the Desktop Wall plugin (which fully supports vertical switching), it's probably the most practical choice and therefore preferable to Desktop Cube.

bimargulies
January 2nd, 2008, 12:04 AM
This works great in xubuntu / xfce4, but doesn't seem to work in KDE for love or money.

coz
January 2nd, 2008, 02:42 AM
Hey jbuckley2004,
I also am not a KDE user however , the pager you mentioned in the panel, you do need to right click that and be sure it is set to only 1 (one) desktop. This is because, as mentioned, compiz fusion is ONLY one desktop streatched across 4 viewports. You are only using one desktop so the system has to reflect that.
coz