Trying out Slackware-Current today. Looking nice. The only hitch for me is spending time turning off KDE4's resource gobbling eye candy and avoiding the massive head butting of background database apps by setting the migration flag to false in the file /usr/share/config/kres-migratorrc before running KDE.

I've wondered why migration=false is not a standard KDE setting. Since few users (except for masochistic application developers perhaps) would want to have that tail-wagging-the-dog migration enabled.

More important, is there a file setting to disable Desktop Effects in KDE4 *before* one runs KDE for the first time?

Yes, Desktop Effects is a fancy detection and configuration feature that enables itself and you can disable it afterwards. But after reading various forum threads of woes and workarounds to deal with the perennial immaturity of Intel and ATI video drivers when Desktop Effects is up and running. Being able to disable Desktop effects before running KDE would be desirable.

I'm one of those users who don't use it or even need it.

Sometimes I wonder if the KDE folks should put in a first time run script GUI box similar to the old KDE 3.5's eye candy meter setting. And a special check box for Desktop Effects with the words "Do you feel brave today?"

Indirectly. Disable compositing in xorg.conf.

This might help:

Learning KDE4

Let me know whether you ever discover a way to totally disable the obnoxious tooltips.

migration is just a standard way in order for the new setting takes place over the old one and make sure everything is set for the new version

Woodsman. Thank you kindly for suggesting the xorg.conf approach and for posting the KDE4 eye candy removal guide on your webpage.