  A comparative analysis of toroidal, compressional and vortical dipole
strengths in the spherical $^{144}$Sm and the deformed $^{154}$Sm is performed
within the random-phase-approximation using a set of different Skyrme forces.
Isoscalar (T=0), isovector (T=1), and electromagnetic excitation channels are
considered. The role of the nuclear convection $j_{\text{con}}$ and
magnetization $j_{\text{mag}}$ currents is inspected. It is shown that the
deformation leads to an appreciable redistribution of the strengths and causes
a spectacular deformation splitting (exceeding 5 MeV) of the isoscalar
compressional mode. In $^{154}$Sm, the $\mu$=0 and $\mu$=1 branches of the mode
form well separated resonances. When stepping from $^{144}$Sm to $^{154}$Sm, we
observe an increase of the toroidal, compression and vortical contributions in
the low-energy region (often called pygmy resonance). The strength in this
region seems to be an overlap of various excitation modes. The energy centroids
of the strengths depend significantly on the isoscalar effective mass $m_0$.
Skyrme forces with a large $m_0$ (typically $m_0/m \approx 0.8 - 1$) seem to be
more suitable for description of experimental data for the isoscalar giant
dipole resonance.
