Who Says Penguins Can't Fly?

As requested, here are my Window-Specific KWin settings for my netbook:

The most important items are the ones that start with “netbook”. I don’t remember why I made two items instead of one, but let’s take a look at the “maximize” setting.

“netbook – maximize” maximizes most windows when they appear. The settings are as follows (tab name in bold):

Window
Description: netbook - maximize
Window class: Unimportant
Window role: Unimportant

Window Extra
Window types: Normal Window
Window title: Unimportant
Extra role: Unimportant
Machine: Unimportant

Geometry
Maximized horizontally: Apply Initially [x]
Maximized vertically: Apply Initially [x]

“netbook – no border” is similar, but instead of Geometry it has

Preferences
No border: Apply Initially [x]

As said, you can merge these two settings into one “netbook” setting if you want to.

There are some applications that you don’t want to have maximized and/or borderless, so I’ve created exception rules for these applications. If you encounter such an application, press Alt-F3 when it has focus and choose Advanced -> Special Application Settings… (or Special Window Settings… if it’s just that specific window). The detected properties are usually pretty good, you just have to change “Description” in “Window”. The rest of the settings:

Geometry
Maximized horizontally: Do Not Affect
Maximized vertically: Do Not Affect

Preferences
No border: Do Not Affect

Note that these items appear before the netbook settings in the list (see screenshot above). This is very important. You can move the items with the “Move Up” and “Move Down” buttons.

A tricky application is Plasma since it’s not obvious how you detect its properties (it’s not a window). Most settings are similar to other applications, but enter qt-subapplication plasma as Window class.
(Note: In later KDE versions (> 4.3) it’s plasma-desktop).

That’s it. 😀