I use the application switcher in combination with the Box Switch effect intensively. But on my current setup there is a problem, because suddenly application switching has become impossible.

When invoking the Alt+Tab key combination I don't get to see a list of open windows (both with compositing enabled and disabled). Instead Alt+Tabbing invokes a crippled implementation which allows me to switch to my current window and the one that had focus before the current.

Have I accidentally hit the wrong key combination and configured things differently, or could something else be amiss?

Are the correct effects selected in System Settings > Desktop > Desktop Effects?

Yes they are. I've changed it from "Box Switch" to "No effect" and back. But with desktop effects disabled application switching doesn't work as well.

I also removed kwin.eventsrc, kwinrc, kwinrulesrc from ~/.kde4/share/config and logged out and in, to no avail, unfortunately. Lastly I reinstalled kde-window-manager and libkwineffects1, but still nog cigar.

Was anything done ( package update, setting change ) around the time the App Switcher broke?

Not that I can think off. I certainly didn't install any new KDE packages the last few days.

Do you still get this problem if you log in with another user?

It works fine under a new user account. So could it be a botched config file? Not sure which one to edit/delete though.

Sounds like it, yes. What exactly do you mean with "crippled"? Does it look strange, or is the (only) problem that you can't switch between more than two windows?

Could it be something as simple as this? Check if you have "Traverse windows on all desktops" checked in System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Focus.

The new user got fresh config files so my guess is that somehwere one of my config files got either corrupted or has the wrong option set. With a fresh user I get all the proper behaviour from the application switcher (a list of open windows and a "No open windows" statement when there are none). On my current setup I don't get either the menu nor the message I can only switch between my current window and the last one that had focus.

Checking that option didn't resolve the problem I'm afraid.

Have you removed everything KWin related in $KDEHOME/share/config?

I did that before, but now I tried it again while not logged in. I removed kwin.eventsrc, kwinrc and kwinrulesrc. Still no application switcher for my user account, maybe I missed a config file?

I have the same problem in Kubuntu 64 even with a new user profile.

Cary

I think I've located the problem. I moved my config folder to another location and logged out and in again so that new config files were created. This time Alt+Tabbing worked. So I began placing all config back to ~/.kde4/share/config, omitting plasmarc, plasma-appletsrc, kwinrc, kwin.eventsrc, kwinrulesrc and the session directory. Alt+Tabbing is still working now, with and without compositing enabled.

I have the application switcher remapped to Control+Tab (or Meta+Tab, because I use an Apple keyboard). As soon as I remap the "Walk through windows" shortcuts to something different they stop working - and start behaving like I described before. Reverting to defaults doesn't bring the normal behaviour back, it remains broken, no matter what.

I found a bug report from january 11th detailing the problems, I hope it gets fixed in a maintenance release. The strange thing is though, I was running KDE 4.2 beta in January without experiencing this problem.