kwin4 cube effect

I installed openSuse 11.1 with kde 4.1.3...upgraded to kde 4.2. Tried to use KWin,but i noticed that it doesn't let you really customize stuff like Compiz does. Compiz has way more options. i loved all the eyecandy that KDE 4.2 gives, but i'll stick with ubuntu...cus it works just fine with compiz.

You can use compiz with KDE.

i know, but its not as easy to install as it is in gnome. I use KDE in my laptop with compiz and gnome in my desktop.

I use kubuntu. In that it installing compiz was just a matter of running the apt-get command. I have never compiled compiz from source so I am unaware of the complexity.

compiz use the 70% my procesor (atholon 64 3200) on xfce , and kwin only 25% with cube

I did xterm and kwin only vs xterm, emerald, compiz, and AWN.

start command xinit /usr/bin/xterm &

kiwn 19.2%
compiz 21.7%

Linux enyawix 2.6.23-enyawix-r3 #6 PREEMPT Fri Sep 5 14:02:44 CDT 2008 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

I'm pretty sure the crazy resource hogging you think you're seeing is actually your gfx-driver. The nVidia-blob is known to have problems with KDE 4, due to teir slow implementation of xrender. The latest driver should have fixed most problems on most cards, but I've heard there still remain some.
In general KDE4 is pretty lightweight, slightly less memory usage then KDE3.5 and surely much less memory usage then the bloated gnome-desktop.

Considering nVidia makes the only graphics chips usable by users wanting working 3D graphics on Linux (The ATI team still don't know how to properly implement OpenGL and the open source drivers lag behind), the whole deal with KDE 4 graphics could have been handled differently. Since the big focus is on composited graphics, XRender should have been a last-resort fallback, while utilizing OpenGL for actual desktop drawing.
XRender problems don't account for reliance on O(n^2) allocations, either.

Another thing that would've helped were the desktop implemented in OpenGL would have been 'free' rotation and scaling of widgets. At least without the noticable distortion and exponential increase in calculation (likely mem alloc) speed when doing resizes.

Besides that, the default theme is ugly and things like toolbars are wasteful of screen space. Configuration is worse than it was with 3.5.

Anyway, I just cannot see how KDE 4 is this new coming of Jesus that people make it out to be.

I am editing a Compiz vs Kwin video with the top command open. Compiz > Kwin