Hi,
I’m testing the latest Qubes-3.2, whonix 14 ws template in the community-testing repo (qubes-template-whonix-ws-14-4.0.1-201807190624) & it seems that a lot of the customisation settings for KDE appearance are missing in System Settings.
The Gnome/GTK settings are there but the KDE ones don’t seem to be there. I previously setup my whonix-13 templates to use the Arc theme for KDE & GTK apps to match my fedora templates & dom0. This provided a modern unified look to the whole OS. What do I have to add to customise KDE themes & font settings?
Also - what version of KDE is whonix 14 using. I tried the virtualbox whonix 14 version & everything seemed like KDE5 with all the customisation settings available - qubes-whonix-14 looks more like KDE4.
Qubes-Whonix has as little (none) KDE installed inside the templates as Qubes Debian template. There is no need. It’s not Non-Qubes-Whonix where we install a desktop environment (KDE). In Qubes the desktop environment is up to dom0 only.
I don’t understand what you mean by KDE theme.
Any examples?
You mean like window decorations?
What I mean is the icon theme, the widget styles, colours etc - NOT the windows as that is obviously handled by dom0.
Basically - on whonix-ws-13 if you go to System Settings - you have Common Appearance and Behaviour at the top, within that - Application Appearance. Inside that Style, Colors, Icons, Fonts.
On whonix-ws-14, you have Appearance at the top with Application Style. Inside that you ONLY have options to change Gnome/GTK appearance, all of the KDE appearance settings are missing.
I apologise in advance for posting to this topic again - but I also tried the final whonix 14 templates in Qubes 4 & Qubes 3.2. The same problem exists.
What I’m trying to say is the KDE appearance settings are not present at all in the System Settings - they were in Whonix 13.
Therefore there isn’t a method to change font settings or icons or application theme. By default there is no font aliasing so text looks bad and also if you open dolphin or any kde app - the theme & colour is strange and there are gnome adwaita icons. This was not the case in qubes whonix 13.
With Qubes whonix I could easily change theme appearance, colour, icons, fonts in order to achieve the same look in KDE/Gtk apps in whonix templated & Gtk/KDE apps in fedora templates.
The last 2 allowed successful change of font & aliasing. Appearance (icons/themes/colours/app style) appeared in System Settings as per regular KDE & whonix 13. Changes could be made in the settings but they are not applied to the actual OS.
I even tried copying .config, .kde, .local from the home folder of whonix-ws-14 in the virtualbox version, but it didn’t work.
I will keep on trying & post here if I find a solution. I would like to know if my problems are universal - does everyone else have the same issue?
Appreciate your efforts! Try to get a Whonix 13 package list.
dpkg -l > pkg13
Then in Whonix 14.
dpkg -l > pkg14
Then use something like meld to see how these files are different.
It could also help to compare Whonix 14 with a Qubes debian-9 template. That is, if Qubes debian-9 template does not have that issue. Does Qubes debian-9 template have that issue?
OK- I finally managed to allow changes to KDE (>K) apps through System Settings. One thing that enabled KDE app theming was adding this line to the bottom of ~/.profile
export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE
In order to add the default KDE Breeze theming & add widgets for changing appearance in System Settings I installed the following:
There may be a way to do it with less packages - but I’m not sure yet, this downloaded about 35MB of files it I remember correctly.
If anyone can figure a lighter way to achieve this - please let me know.
I personally have ‘Arc-Dark’ theme applied in dom0 with ‘Papirus’ icons & a slightly modified ‘Paper’ window manager style & Arc/Papirus in Fedora 28 & also in Whonix for KDE & GTK apps.
Anyway I hope this is of use to anyone that wants to achieve a modern unified desktop between different templates.