Last QT upgrade spoiled look of KDE applications

[barlowrm]

Hi all,

a couple of days ago a large number of qt-related packages were updated.
After installing the update, all my kde windows.
I attach a example from dolphin



It is hard ot explain how it used to be, but the overall feeling was of a better smoothness. In particular the bars limiting the frames where less pronounced.

This appears also to have spoiled other applications, like libre office.

It is the first time I face this kind of problems, so I really have no idea where to start investigating.

Any suggestion is much appreciated.

thanks for your help,

Andrea.

[SteveRiley]

In System Settings | Application Appearance | Style, which widget style is selected?

[barlowrm]

Hi Steve,

thanks for your answer. I tried going there and changing the widget style. When clicking on Apply nothing happens, i.e. the window appearance does not change.

Any more hints?

[SecretCode]

But what widget style did you have? Your screenshot looks like "MS Windows 9x" ... ie ugly ... whereas the default is Oxygen (and some prefer Plastique).

In any case, 'Apply' should have changed things so there is some wider problem.

Are you on 11.10 (as suggested by the subforum)? I am and I haven't received any qt upgrades recently.

What does dolphin --version at the command line say?

[barlowrm]

Hi,

I used to be amongst the "some" which prefer Oxygen
And as you say the problem is that widgets style is not updated.


dolphin --version
Qt: 4.8.0
KDE Development Platform: 4.8.00 (4.8.0
Dolphin: 2.0

Launching dolphin itself from the command line results in some soprano-related errors (probably because I don't have nepomuk activated), without other complaints. The bunch of qt updates were like:

libqt4-network 4:4.8.0-1ubuntu8~oneiric1~ppa1 (amd64)

Thanks for your help!

Andrea.

[SecretCode]

Do you have any backports from Precise? Or have you done something else manually to get Qt 4.8? As I say no 4.8 has hit my machine.

If you're on the Precise beta or have any backports from it, I would suggest ... waiting. It could be a temporary issue.

If not ... what happens if you boot into the "KDE failsafe" session (or whatever it's called), or create a new user and log in as that? That would see if this caused by any settings in your home directory.

[barlowrm]

Hi,

this is interesting: if I log as myself in failsafe kde, the problem is still there.
From a newly created user instead there are no problems at all.

Also one more piece of info: I kept digging into System Settings -> Application Appearance, and at a closer look I noticed that the Oxygen style is not in the list at all, for my user. There are other styles, and any attempt to switch to them fails. From the new user instead I can see Oxygen is there, and changing style works smoothly.

Concerning sources: I do have a LP-PPA-ubuntu-ppa-backports/oneiric, even though, at this point, it looks more like a config problem than a library one.

Any hints?

Thanks again for your help,

Andrea.

[barlowrm]

Hi,

I solved this! The disappearing oxygen was the clue. I googled a bit and found this suggestion:

rm ~/.config/Trolltech.conf
kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

It fixed my problem. Interestingly enough, now oxygen style switching works too.

Thanks for all your help,

Andrea.

[SteveRiley]

I have noticed periodic odd behaviors that appear to have only one thing in common: deleting that Trolltech.conf file makes said behaviors go away. Perhaps it should be purged at every boot...?

[barlowrm]

Well, I am not sure what the best practice would be (since I am not sure what the config cache is used for, to start with).
One thing I would definitely change is the name: I bet even now there is a significant fraction of users who don't have the slightest idea of that Trolltech was. And things will get worse in time.
We will end up having a configuration file with the most cryptic name, which sounds wrong to me.

jm2c,

Andrea.