Hi. I hope this is the right place to say this.

I've always been wondering why there are so many places to choose the "Desktop switching" effect. In the following statements I'm referring to kde 4.4.3, on debian squeeze.

You can find the first (and maybe fastest) way in Desktop Effects-> General->Common Settings. This one is easy and fast. Let us say that I choose slide here. The desktops now actually slide, fine.

Then there's a second one in an "All effect" tab, let us say that I place a tick on "Desktop Cube", but that is not enough to change the desktop switching effect, in fact you need to activate "Desktop Cube Animation" too.

Then I look in "Multiple Desktop", I can change the switching effect even there and make a different choice, let's say "fading". That's the third way.

Now the first one says "slide", the second one says "cube", the third one says "fading". Which one wins? Not me.

This is the most confusing thing I've ever found in KDESC.

PS: At first I was tempted to propose something about this in brainstorm, but I don't know whether this have been fixed in 4.5 and I find a bit arrogant to place my first post in brainstorm .

The second option is always ignored as for desktop switching only the "Desktop Cube Animation" can be used - cube is only the ctrl+f11 mode. As you might have noticed the first and third option offer exactly the same options and they are synchronized. So in your case the third option will win, because it's the last you activated. If you go back to the Common settings it will also be updated to the new settings.

The redundanz of option 1 and 3 is intended. 1 is for easily change desktop effects, so all about effects, three is to easily change multiple desktops, so all about multiple desktops.

Now I get it.

Yet, allow me to say it is quite confusing at a first glance. Maybe it's just me, I've never played much with desktop switching effects (but I've played with kde since 3.5.9)

When I saw the two options with the same list it really surprised me, like those list were put in different places to do different things. Then I find that they do the same thing, then again I find that "Cube Animation" can be set in another place, then I notice that these three options are coherent and that the last choice I have made is the one you get (and I'm assured by a developer that this is the way it works).

Well this is my little experience as a user.

Thank you for your attention

If you have better ideas to fix the problem that there are two approaches to get to the configuration, please tell us on bugs.kde.org

In general we have the problem that users knowing there exists something like desktop effects will look in their configuration and users not familiar with the setup will look were they expect it to belong (multiple desktops). It's a really difficult situation and in my opinion duplicating the settings is the best of three bad options.