:D im clam as a cucumber , the sticky out tongue implied it was *tongue in cheek*.

I just took a gamble and removed the mate panels from the startup even though i was warned not to but its worked fine.

Compiz sorted, emerald theamer sorted, Cairo menus/docks sorted, and iv not seen any screen tearing at all so looks like KDE does not like my vid card but compiz compositing is fine.

I did like the KDE DE it was nice and flashy whereas mate, cinnamon, lxde, gnome all look ugly but with a little tinkering great things can be done.

There are many desktops - I prefer non-flashy.
For example, here is Mint Cinnamon on my netbook..

well yea , on my lappys i tend to use xfce or cinnamon if they have a little more power but on my main comp i have loads of spare resources so i like to use it to its fullest (although i dont think i could ever really max it out) so i like a real flashy DE on my main comp.

Still learning but quite happy so far but im sure it'll change loads.

http://i.imgur.com/MfzK0wq.png

wonderful to at last say goodbye to the screen tearing :-D .