Translation: That sounds like you caused this problem for yourself by choosing debian stable.

emerald, compiz: fairly famous window managers/compositors everyone used to use, e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE

> how is this related to window borders

compiz is famous for including all sorts of fancy/over the top effects like windows going up in flames, so stuff like glowing window borders should be no problem at all.

By now compiz seems mostly unused, but many effects are also available in kwin. For instance

system settings -> desktop behavior -> desktop effects -> dim inactive

Kinda the opposite of outlines, where it just dims everything else instead of highlighting one, but maybe it works for you?

Tried the dim thing. Suuuper annoying. When I switch from a fullscreen Firefox to a tiny terminal and the whole screen dims down.

Also it makes it hard to work with multiple windows, because some of them are dimmed then.

This is a setting you should disable.

Very interesting. Would you also like to share what you did not like about breakfast this morning?