Even though I've disabled all visual effects in some places some effects get through - e.g. in KPackageKit package description fades in and out or alt-tab tasklist selection moves smoothly. Am I to assume that some native KDE 4.5 applications no longer respect 'cut the graphics **** out' setting?

Did you use "kdesudo" to run KPackageKit (ie. were you asked for your root password before it ran).

If you did, then this is the reason, as root's settings are applied instead of yours, as the application is running as root.

No I didn't, and it's not just KPackageKit - it's everywhere. Tasklist widget slides process buttons when one in the middle is closed. Disabled items fade in/out - even on the very desktop effects page! The mouse-over glowy halo around buttons and checkboxes. Konsole(!) profile appearance schemes fly in one by one. KDE 3.5 was such a nice thing and turned into this... :(

We don't know what Linux distro you are running. How did you "disabled all visual effects"? Here, in Kubuntu 10.10, KDE 4.5.4, the option would be K Menu > System Settings > Desktop Effects and unchecking Enable desktop effects in the General tab. A restart/reboot and logging back in should respect that change.

I am using Fedora 14 - settings are the same there. Just for the hell of it tried kubuntu 10.10 with he same result - visual effects cannot be disabled completely, they still linger in all the places I mentioned and more.

You may need to check the Oxygen style configuration, located at System Settings > Application Appearance > Configure.

Ah, that's better - most of global crawly interface stuff is gone, thanks. But individual apps are still misbehaving - tasklist (in many ways), konsole... Or system settings - why when mouse pointer hovers over system settings window it changes to oxygen-style even though I am not even using oxygen style anymore?

Does the style actually change to Oxygen to does it just appear like it is Oxygen? 4.5 should be using tooltip code which asks the current style to draw it the tooltip.

To avoid confusion all I said applies to mouse pointer scheme only, not to window style, and depends on the pointer scheme: out of the standard schemes redglass does not change but black does. And it may revert back to the original when mouse moves out of the settings window or remain oxygenized until I change scheme to something else and then back to black. I tried downloading dmz-aa theme from KDE-look.org - same result as with standard black. Looks like it does not like black mouse pointers for some reason :) But I do.

And another and even more annoying problem popped up: ^F4 does not work in seamonkey or firefox on fresh kubuntu 10.10 install. Needless to say it works properly i.e. closes the active tab in ubuntu 10.10.

Unfortunately I don't know why that occurs, but System Settings itself does not specify an explicit cursor for tooltips itself. It could be that other themes lack the appropriate cursor image.

With regards to Ctrl + F4, I suggest looking at the shortcuts specified in System Settings to see if it has been claimed.