Hardware is a Dell XPSM1330 laptop, NVidia GeForce 8400M GS. Laptop display is not on, I am connected to a Matrox Triple Head To Go which connects to 3 Dell EWP 22' ws monitors.

ps shows the following 2 compiz pid's running;
compiz --sm-client-id 117f000001000121259283700000028050001 glib gconf

compiz-tray-icon --sm-config-prefix /compiz-tray-icon-vrH9Fn/ --sm-client-id 117f000001000121259293800000028050011 --screen 0

The 2 things I am having a problem with is;
1. Configuration. There used to be a nice app with (I would say 100+) options, where all I can find is the GLDesktop and the Desktop Effects which is the 2 options (wobbly & cube).


On a clean startup I have the above, and only 1 workspace, I can't click other ones (used to be setup as the wall with the mouse at the end moves to next), but now it's like I have one virtual desktop, and can't figure out where / how to add one.

If I try to run compiz-manager I get the following;
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 01:00.0 0300: 10de:0427 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (3840x1024) to maximum 3D texture size (8192): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting emerald

But the config screen has nothing for minimizing effects and all the "cool" stuff like that. It does enable the cube where I can then click the other workspaces, but I am just at a loss right now.

Anyone have .02 to throw out it's much appreciated.

I've always gone for the start-from-scratch route: Get rid of the stock compiz ("Desktop Effects") setup and get it all at once from either a 3rd party repo with packages for your distro or with the source tarballs from compiz themselves.
More specifically, what you're looking for is compiz-fusion; the name comes from the combination of the projects that both compiz and beryl were doing at the time. In addition, you'll want compiz-fusion-icon, which is the fast-track icon to get to compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm). Fusion is what has all the cool minimize/close/fade/shade effects; the current version can even turn the cube into an aquarium.