Ultimate Edition Forum

This sounds more like when effects are enabled with kwin. Sometimes after activating effects, like wobbly windows, desktop cube etc., from within system settings, an error message will appear, saying that all the effects failed to load. This is actually something that can quite suck, but not always. the first thing I usually do is reboot. There are a couple things..such as if you go into a system with a different window Manager, say XFCE w/Compiz, then later go into KDE, you may still have compiz activated. You need to switch the window manager, and then reboot. Or if you anticipate, switch before you leave the other environment. If you are going into KDE in kwin, and then go into system settings, and try to activate effects it should go more smoothly, but..it may not, it may not at all. This has a lot to do with the version of KDE that comes with Ultimate Edition 3.5, which was standard at the time of release..4.8.5..I believe. That version is horrible, it's like night and day between that and even 4.9. Even at that you still want to be at 4.10 or above. Simple things would seem to be a disaster with 4.8.5.

Honestly, I have no clue if a simple upgrade will bring up the KDE version. I have only done backports, and I can't say that its exactly the easiest solution. Awesome yes, but you still have to learn KDE system settings and how it's general layout works. It is much easier to switch to Classic at Login and use Compiz. Or set up XFCE, LXDE.