kudos to d1saster on irc,

http://quickgit.kde.org/index.php?p=clones%2Fkde-workspace%2Fknechtges%2Fpersonal.git&a=commit&h=c1cbbe012b86fb62f11a5e03dd4432adcde03abe

%changelog
* Mon Feb 13 2012 Rex Dieter <rdieter> 4.8.0-7
- kwin llvmpipe whitelist (#790142)
- powerdevil verbosity++ (kde#289760)

Had to backout, due to problems introduced in bug #794835

I'm taking this off F17Target: According to the people who know what they're talking about (ajax, mgraesslin, d1saster), KWin needs more magic from the llvmpipe than gnome-shell, and chances are it'll not be ready in time for Fedora 17. :-( Software rendering will have to stick with XRender or uncomposited mode for now.

OK, retested today.  with both kwin and kwin_gles

kwin was very slow, windows would appear/disappear on a whim, not usable (I think I'll try testing again, with all effects disabled).

kwin_gles unfortunately, failed to initialize compositing:

$ kwin_gles --replace
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
OpenGL vendor string:                   VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string:                 Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)
OpenGL version string:                  OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 8.0.1
OpenGL shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
Driver:                                 LLVMpipe
GPU class:                              Unknown
OpenGL version:                         2.0
GLSL version:                           1.0.16
Mesa version:                           8.0.1
Linux kernel version:                   3.3
Direct rendering:                       yes
Requires strict binding:                no
GLSL shaders:                           yes
Texture NPOT support:                   yes
kwin(20181): Required support for binding pixmaps to EGLImages not found, disabling compositing 
kwin(20181): Failed to initialize compositing, compositing disabled 
kwin(20181): Consult http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KWin/4.0-release-notes#Setting_up

Created attachment 573394 [details]
screenshot showing window corruption

This was with all kwin compositing effects and features disabled, performance and display of active window was still very poor.

Just a question, any progress/improvement on this with KDE 4.9?

Looks like Martin (upstream) officially recommends against this approach, 
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2012/10/to-llvmpipe-or-not/

opting for xrender or non-compositing fallbacks instead.

*** Bug 921593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***