Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

[the.spike]

I've been messing about with Kubuntu for a week now (having been running an LFS box for years and been using UNIX for longer but this is my first foray into running a linux desktop) and I just doesn't seem to be slick. I'm sure I must have missed something but I don't know what.

First up Firefox, there's something wrong about how it's being rendered. The attached screen shot shows you what I mean (guess what I couldn't get to work when I took it!). The tabs aren't rendered properly and radio buttons seem to have a grey boarder. I've done some digging and found comments about downloading various qtk packages but that doesn't seem to have helped. There was also an Oxygen theme (I think) for firefox that I downloaded but that didn't make any difference. (All of this is aside from the font problem I started with here the whole thing just looked horrible and I had to go and find a different font to install and use).

Then there's Evolution. Everything I've read suggests that it's the Outlook replacement of choice. I've managed to set it up, I've even imported all my contacts, emails and calendar appointments. But again, it just doesn't look nice. Functionally it works, but it's not in the same class as Outlook, it's just not as pretty. Then there's simple things like remembering how I've sized panels. It doesn't always remember that. (Oh and although I did import all my contacts somewhere in the process I lost all the first lines of the addresses, but lets not worry about that now, that could be anyone's fault!)

And then there's the desktop itself. I started off with Gnome on Ubuntu but it just looked a bit childish to me while KDE looked a lot more polished. I switched to Kubuntu and to be honest it didn't look bad on first boot. But then the problems began to show up. There's the above stuff I've already mentioned. Then there's where different programs run. I've got a dual monitor setup on an nVidia card and I've managed to set up twinview. Now when I position a window on a given monitor I want it to open there all the time. This just doesn't seem to happen. In widows 99/100 times it did. In Kubuntu it appears to open things where it wants them. I did read a post saying that it should be the app that remembers where it is, but I disagree. The OS is in overall charge it should be the OS that remembers, but I digress. I've also got 4 little blue boxes on my main panel that used to be icons for widgets. Don't know what happened to the icons but a right click on the box reveals the widget still to be there. Generally windows don't look too bad but there's an edge to everything that just makes it all look a bit off..

I've seen screen shots (and there's always a screen shot thread on www.justlinux.com) and they all look far better than what appears to be the standard install on (K)ubuntu.

And that's my problem. While I could sit here for hours tweaking and playing and getting it all looking nice, I can't be arsed. Gone are the days when I was happy to sit in front of a computer all day at work and then happy to do the same for another 6 hours at home. Maybe I'm being harsh. At the end of the day Linux isn't Windows and I shouldn't expect it to try and be the same. It would be completely missing the point if it did.

I'm trying to like the Linux desktop, I really am, but at the moment it's just not polished enough. I want to be able to boot it up and for it to look great without me having to play for hours, downloading this and that, and tweaking settings to get it all sorted out. I know we all moan at windows, but when I installed Vista on this very machine everything did just work.

I'm going to persevere because I do like Linux (so if anyone's got pointers to any of the above issues please shout up!)

I think one day one of the distros will come up trumps and will really be able to battle Windows, trouble is I just don't think that's going to be soon..

Sorry for the rant, but I've got it out of my system now! Probably! Seriously though, if you can point me at any solutions for the desktop problems, please do!

Thanks,

spike...

[Snowhog]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

Long 'rant' but you didn't tell us what version of Kubuntu you installed, nor what you installed in on - PC architecture; video card/chip make and model. That would be helpful.

[aged hippy]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

It is possible - if you are using the KDE 4x desktop, that the problem of Firefox rendering incorrectly can be cured if you install

sudo apt-get install gtk-qt-engine=1:0.8-1ubuntu2

That worked for me.

(... and possibly <Search> the Forum for ugly and maybe fugly.)

[the.spike]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

Long 'rant' but you didn't tell us what version of Kubuntu you installed, nor what you installed in on - PC architecture; video card/chip make and model. That would be helpful.

*bangs head on desk*

You always forget the simple things when you get a good rant on... Sorry!

I've currently got Kubuntu 8.10 installed. It's running on a Dell Dimensions 9200 PC with an Intel Dual Core E6600 CPU and 3GB ram. The nVidia card is a GeForce 7900 GS with 256mb on board. Both the 19" monitors are set to 1280x1024 and are freshing at 60Hz.

It is possible - if you are using the KDE 4x desktop, that the problem of Firefox rendering incorrectly can be cured if you install

sudo apt-get install gtk-qt-engine=1:0.8-1ubuntu2

Tried that but I got the following error:

spike@spike-1:~$ sudo apt-get install gtk-qt-engine=1:0.8-1ubuntu2
[sudo] password for spike:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Version ‘1:0.8-1ubuntu2’ for ‘gtk-qt-engine’ was not found

I did install the qtk-qt-engine using synaptic. Looks like it installed version 1:1.1+svn20080816-0ubuntu5. I tried selecting the force option from the drop down menu to try and get access to previous version but it wasn't available.

Never thought of searching for ugly.. I'll plug it and see what I get back..

Thanks again all,

spike...

[muzicman0]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

OK, the package is gtk2-engines-qtcurve

so, do:

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-qtcurve

then open KMenu->System Settings->Appearance->GTK Styles and Fonts and set "Use another style" (under category GTK Styles) to QtCurve. Save it and restart Firefox. That should take care of the ugliness in firefox. for the life of me, I don't know why this isn't the default behavior...

Evolution. I think it is a GTK app also (gnome), so the above may fix that also. I personally use thunderbird, and can theme it however I like. If you are using KDE (which you are), I would use kontact as my PIM if you need that functionality.

As far as where windows are placed, size, etc...right click on the window title bar, and choose advanced|advanced window settings (or something like that). It should pop up a window that you can set to remember last settings, make it default to whatever you like, etc. There are some things that you can play around with in there, for instance, the default behavior will sometimes make dialog windows open up the same as the parent window (size), which I don't like, but there is a setting to make it only apply to 'normal windows' as opposed to every conceivable type.

Hopefully that info will get you going better, if you need anything more, please, feel free to ask, or if the above doesn't work/make sense.

mm0.

[the.spike]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

Thanks for that. I checked Synaptic and I already had that package installed. However I've now been through the system settings and changed them and it appears to have made a difference. It's better but I still wouldn't say polished, but we're getting there. Evolution still doesn't look great but I think that's just the way it looks. Menu bar and stuff are fine, it's just the stuff IN the windows that looks pants.

Found the advanced windows settings, and after getting the settings wrong and managing to max Firefox and hide the title bar off the screen (it's alt+f3 to get to the options if you need to know) I've almost got it sorted. Evolution will will now open up on my right hand monitor and FF on my left (I find it odd that although I've got two monitors the way you have to set up X-windows with Twinview makes the OS think there is only 1 HUGE monitor. I tried to set it up for dual X-windows sessions but it just didn't like the config that the Nvidia app wrote. Anyway...) HOWEVER, if I already have Evolution open and then start FF it opens on the right hand side. It's like it just ignores the settings.. very annoying.. Evolution will open on the right if FF is on the left.. any ideas what might be causing that?

I've just fired Kontact up with no data in and it certainly has more polish than evolution.. I'll check out how we go about migrating stuff to it..

(Just tried the FF opening on the left problem with Kontact on the right instead of Evolution and it does the same thing, seems to forget where it was meant to be putting it.)

And annoyingly I've still got blue boxes on the panel where there should be widget icons. The main offender seems to be Kmix which also has a nasty habit of opening up maximised when I log in rather than staying in the tray.. (and the start up tune sometimes gets chopped but I've not yet worked out why..)

I feel like it's just moan moan moan.. I'm sorry.. I really am.. If you've got any more pointers though please shout up!

Cheers,

spike...

[muzicman0]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

First off, if you are still on kde 4.1.x, I would strongly urge you to upgrade to KDE 4.2...you can check your version by

kde4-config -v

There are plenty of posts on here about how to upgrade, or you can go to www.kubuntu.org, so I won't waste time giving instructions...see if that fixes the window placement problem, and the blue boxes...

yeah the whole twin-view thing is a pain, compared to windows, no argument there.

Oh yeah, for firefox, I would download a new theme for it, the default is ugly. There are a variety out there, I use one that makes it look like IE7...there is also a KDE specific theme that is nice, makes FF look more like the windows version of FF.

I would also check you System Settings|Advanced|Sessions settings, and see how it is set up...I have noticed that if you have the default 'Restore Previous Session', it has a tendency to open up windows that were closed when you shut down the PC (kmix?)...I set mine to an empty session...then if there is anything I want to auto load on boot up, I add it to auto start (IE: yakuake).

mm0.

[the.spike]

Re: Desktop Problems - Bad rendering, forgetful apps and general unpolishedness

Right.. upgraded to 4.2 and it didn't work - Big time. Got an error during the upgrade although didn't spot what package. It gave me some commands to run so I ran them on a console. When I restarted the machine I got a KDE 4.2 splash screen but nothing really worked. Any window I opened opened at the top left hand side of the desktop, had no window title bar, couldn't be typed in, although the keyboard would type on a console. I had Adept telling me there were 76 packages that needed updating but wouldn't let me put type password in to start the process.

Generally just a pile of poo and I was quite shouty.

From another console I ran apt-get and installed all the packages it wanted. It left 4 out so I forced them (forget what, wasn't in the mood for making notes at that point, although I don't think they were critical to the problem) but still no joy.

Noticed I only had one desktop. Managed to get into the System Settings to the screen that deals with them and it was telling me that the kcm_kwindesktop library was missing. Couldn't find it as a package to install using apt-get.

Had to boot to my Vista partition, did some browsing and couldn't find anyone saying the same kind of thing. Did find a single post when searching for kcm_kwindesktop that said that kubuntu-desktop hadn't been installed and once they installed it all their problems went away.

So I tried that (it wasn't installed) and it worked.

bugger me! How does such a major component of the desktop go missing? It was probably something to do with the first error that I got during install but I don't recall it moaning about a desktop named package.

Anyway. 4.2 is installed now and appears to be working better than the last version. Windows are generally staying where they are told. FF is opening on the left even if there is something open on the right. I'm even getting a full play of the startup tune!

Off to bed. Next on the list, migrate data to Kontact, then get it to sync with my HTC Touch. Then if I'm still here sort out something to replace iTunes, find an Ultaedit clone, some accounting software and then we're probably well on the way to staying..

Thanks again..

spike...