Help needed with Desktop Effects and Cairo Dock (14 RC)

[DoctorZULU]

Hi, I'm sort of a newbie. I had Mint 7 installed 2-3 years ago and loved it - all the customization possibilities and all the eye candy on gnome-look.org - but in the end I drifted back to Windows because I couldn't get all my hardware working ( you couldn't get the necessary drivers at the time ). A month ago I decided look in on Mint again and went with KDE because of modern look and feel and the preinstalled Desktop Effects - I'm a big fan of the cube and wobbly windows. This time around I got everything working. But on my machine Mint 13 KDE is unfortunately quite unstable. So I've tried out Mate/Compiz and LMDE/Compiz and with both I ended up with a black screen. I think the combination of Compiz, Nvidia drivers and GeForce 8600 GT is a bad one. And anyway, I find the look and feel of KDE much nicer. So when I when saw that 14 KDE RC was out I installed it and haven't had a single thing crash on me since then + the system is 0.2 GiB RAM lighter and several minor bugs that I had noticed are fixed - so I'm very pleased with the RC. In fact I would call it perfect, if I could just fix two "visual" bugs:

Cairo Dock - The White Line <THIS PART SOLVED>:
I have my favorite dock Cairo installed (a little buggy compared to the version in Mint 13) and everything is OK until I activate the Desktop Cube - then I get a white line above the dock. I had the same problem in Mint 13, but solved it. The problem is, I can't remember how. I think it was either by adjusting the settings in Cairo or by installing the Nvidia driver 295.33 instead of Nouveau. In Mint 14 the Nvidia driver version is 304 and when I install it, it messes up the cube - I get a giant cube displaced to the right side of the screen with sides where the one half is my desktop and the other half is black. Anyway, I'm not sure what did last time and I've tried anything I could think of. Any ideas ?
Edit:
I copied the Cairo folder in .config from Mint 13 to Mint 14 and that solved the problem. But it left a bit dissatisfied as it didn't give me a clue about what bug in Cairo was causing the white line. Luckily, after recreating the look I like, the line was back and this time around it was much easier to retrace my steps. Turns out that if you set the line width of the dock's external frame to 1, you get the line above - so don't.





Window Frame - Another Line:
When I wobble my wobbly windows, there is sort of a dark line between the window frame and the inside. When I tried out Mate/Compiz it was the same, but there I could adjust the settings in Compiz to get rid of it. Is there anyway to do that in Desktop Effects ? (BTW are Desktop Effects and Compiz related ?)





I hope that there's someone out there who can help me, because this time I'm sticking with Linux ! (- after three weeks with Linux I had to log into Windows to do something specific and at first I thought something was wrong - it seemed like everything in there was happening in slow motion...)

If you can help please consider: I know nothing about the inner workings of Linux - the folder-structure is a mystery to me, I don't speak code and the only thing I know how to do in the terminal is right-click-paste. And top of that: English is not my native language - So please be gentle

[claudecat]

I can't address your question directly as I haven't used cairo-dock much, but my advice would be to try using what KDE gives you to achieve what you want. It's really easy to set up additional panel(s) with launchers and other widgets and put them wherever you want. I've always wondered why people use docks or compiz with KDE when all or most of the functionality is already there at your fingertips. It's the single most configurable DE ever made - just play with it and I think you'll find a way to approximate cairo-dock's usefulness without running additional and apparently problematic code.

[DoctorZULU]

I can't address your question directly as I haven't used cairo-dock much, but my advice would be to try using what KDE gives you to achieve what you want. It's really easy to set up additional panel(s) with launchers and other widgets and put them wherever you want. I've always wondered why people use docks or compiz with KDE when all or most of the functionality is already there at your fingertips. It's the single most configurable DE ever made - just play with it and I think you'll find a way to approximate cairo-dock's usefulness without running additional and apparently problematic code.

I started out with a KDE launcher but kept missing the 3D look, the animations and the functionalities of a dock like Cairo. I've had one on Mac, Vista, Mint 7/8 and Windows 7 - guess I'm a creature of habit. BTW the white line is the only problem I've had and that's solved now (see original post).