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Kethinov
January 3rd, 2006, 05:02 AM
The biggest reason I use GNOME over KDE right now is because theming in KDE is such a huge pain in the rear. In GNOME making it pretty is as simple as going to GNOME Look, downloading themes, and dragging them into theme manager.

For KDE, you go to KDE Look, hope and pray there's a dpkg available, hope and pray that dpkg works, else hope and pray it compiles. I get about 10% of the themes that interest me on KDE look working; it's very disappointing.

Why is KDE so much harder to theme, and is there any improvement in sight?

Omnios
January 3rd, 2006, 05:18 AM
Think you hit that right on as I found it just about the only peeve I have with KDE

bored2k
January 3rd, 2006, 05:22 AM
Personally, it's one of the many sour spots I *try* to ignore every time I *try* to give KDE a shot.

Iandefor
January 3rd, 2006, 05:32 AM
Personally, it's one of the many sour spots I *try* to ignore every time I *try* to give KDE a shot.

Rather strong language, there, Bored2K. Had a bad time with KDE :)?

I don't like KDE, and I find it's theming scheme to be one of the most irritating things about it.

bored2k
January 3rd, 2006, 05:56 AM
Rather strong language, there, Bored2K. Had a bad time with KDE :)?Yes I do have a bad time every time I *try* to like and use KDE. If you want a simple example of why I do _not_ like it, having a crippled KDE Control Manager (or whatever kcontrol stands for) about 91.7% of the times I try KDE does not really appeal to me at all (a kcontrol that turns into /dev/null everytime I try to use my Admin mojo).

Crippled Kcontrol: 30 strings of pulled hair.
Not-as-visually-appealing-as-the-competition style: 25 "what the ..." QT-eye rolls.
Kbloat: It's easier to find the exact number of Pi than to clean it.

For everything else, there's GTK-powered managers.

Iandefor
January 3rd, 2006, 06:02 AM
Yes I do have a bad time every time I *try* to like and use KDE. If you want a simple example of why I do _not_ like it, having a crippled KDE Control Manager (or whatever kcontrol stands for) about 91.7% of the times I try KDE does not really appeal to me at all (a kcontrol that turns into /dev/null everytime I try to use my Admin mojo).

Crippled Kcontrol: 30 strings of pulled hair.
Not-as-visually-appealing-as-the-competition style: 25 "what the ..." QT-eye rolls.
Kbloat: It's easier to find the exact number of Pi than to clean it.

For everything else, there's GTK-powered managers.

[Insert Powerful Expletive Here] that's crazy. I've never had such trouble.

cowlip
January 3rd, 2006, 06:14 AM
Personally I've found I don't even try new themes because of this, but the colour selector maks up for it bigtime. I don't see a gnome equivalent unfortunately :(

kingsidy
January 3rd, 2006, 06:15 AM
i agree with the statement. i have use kde with suse for a while and the customization is so much easier with gnome.

TrinitronX
January 3rd, 2006, 06:30 AM
I haven't had any problems in customizing my themes in kde at all. I found it rather easy and intuitive through the system control panel, and also have done some things with dpkg's and compiling from source. The only things that I haven't been able to compile were broken from the start, and others were having similar problems with them.

newbie2
January 3rd, 2006, 07:03 AM
KDE 4 to get Dashboard widget support
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060102-5881.html

SuperDiscoMachine V.5.7-3
January 3rd, 2006, 08:42 AM
Yes I do have a bad time every time I *try* to like and use KDE. If you want a simple example of why I do _not_ like it, having a crippled KDE Control Manager (or whatever kcontrol stands for) about 91.7% of the times I try KDE does not really appeal to me at all (a kcontrol that turns into /dev/null everytime I try to use my Admin mojo).

Ah, mods who don't have a clue but flame anyway. Great.
The kcontrol stuff you are talking about is a kubuntu bug, not a kde problem. Kubuntu foobared the admin stuff in kcontrol, which has been explained about a 1000 times on this forum, which you would know had you bothered to search the forum before flaming and which is largely solved if you use the kde3.5 packages from kubuntu anyway.



Crippled Kcontrol: 30 strings of pulled hair.

See above


Not-as-visually-appealing-as-the-competition style: 25 "what the ..." QT-eye rolls.
Huh?


Kbloat: It's easier to find the exact number of Pi than to clean it.

Huh? A default kubuntu install doesn't have more apps installed than a default ubuntu install, so what the f**** are you whining about?

Well done: Clueless, factually incorrect and inflamatory post, just what you'd expect from a moderator.

P.S.: About theming in KDE, at least you can change the colors of a theme...

poofyhairguy
January 3rd, 2006, 09:31 AM
The biggest reason I use GNOME over KDE right now is because theming in KDE is such a huge pain in the rear. In GNOME making it pretty is as simple as going to GNOME Look, downloading themes, and dragging them into theme manager.

For KDE, you go to KDE Look, hope and pray there's a dpkg available, hope and pray that dpkg works, else hope and pray it compiles. I get about 10% of the themes that interest me on KDE look working; it's very disappointing.

Why is KDE so much harder to theme, and is there any improvement in sight?

I have never agreed with a thread more.

ComplexNumber
April 27th, 2006, 01:26 AM
am i right in thinking that there isn't a HOWTO concerning theming KDE and Gnome on this forum? i've just done a search of "theme" and "theming" and i can't see one. maybe one needs to be written because i think it would help a lot of people both for KDE and Gnome :).

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 01:43 AM
The biggest reason I use GNOME over KDE right now is because theming in KDE is such a huge pain in the rear. In GNOME making it pretty is as simple as going to GNOME Look, downloading themes, and dragging them into theme manager.

For KDE, you go to KDE Look, hope and pray there's a dpkg available, hope and pray that dpkg works, else hope and pray it compiles. I get about 10% of the themes that interest me on KDE look working; it's very disappointing.

Why is KDE so much harder to theme, and is there any improvement in sight?

Yeah there are only 164 officialy supported themes compared to ubuntus 2 which are really a mix of 2 made into one or one with differences.

KDE, interctions between programs like grip to amarok to k3b, in gnome, ehhh, star some ripper, ehhh, access the files, ehhh, get a playlist from beep, which is not installed by default and no, i don't even want to mention the suffering of totem.

You are done, in gnome, you have started to troubleshoot...

NO, Gnome is nowhere near the usability of KDE, not even the most dedicated GNOME developers contest that.

KDE is where it is all happening nowadays, the rest is for the ones that have to be compliant.

htinn
April 27th, 2006, 01:50 AM
I never had any problems with themes in KDE. My only real problem with KDE was applications strangely crashing all the time and me scratching over my head about it, wondering whether it was worth the bother.

Super King
April 27th, 2006, 01:52 AM
Yeah there are only 164 officialy supported themes compared to ubuntus 2 which are really a mix of 2 made into one or one with differences.

KDE, interctions between programs like grip to amarok to k3b, in gnome, ehhh, star some ripper, ehhh, access the files, ehhh, get a playlist from beep, which is not installed by default and no, i don't even want to mention the suffering of totem.

You are done, in gnome, you have started to troubleshoot...

NO, Gnome is nowhere near the usability of KDE, not even the most dedicated GNOME developers contest that.

KDE is where it is all happening nowadays, the rest is for the ones that have to be compliant.


:lol: Can't beat a joke like that on a boring Wednesday night.

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 01:59 AM
The biggest reason I use GNOME over KDE right now is because theming in KDE is such a huge pain in the rear. In GNOME making it pretty is as simple as going to GNOME Look, downloading themes, and dragging them into theme manager.

For KDE, you go to KDE Look, hope and pray there's a dpkg available, hope and pray that dpkg works, else hope and pray it compiles. I get about 10% of the themes that interest me on KDE look working; it's very disappointing.

Why is KDE so much harder to theme, and is there any improvement in sight?[/QUOTE]


For GTK, you have the every app kinda widgeted, until you run several from different user accounts, or changes "part" of the widgets for one users which in some cases results in three close boxes in the upper left corner...

Some apps open links in the Epiphany web browse even though i have SET ff as my main browser, that is some mightly slick integration...

YAY, i can most definently understand why you like... oh wait, i can't...

Apologize to this world and find a nice dealer, zuchre, neime tranzida?

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:03 AM
:lol: Can't beat a joke like that on a boring Wednesday night.

Could you contest it? Nah, just write it off as a joke as you know it is true but you still prefer Gnome.

Half of the code you are running in Gnome has passed through my computer, most of it nowadays is done by people far more talented by me... in the KDE camp that is, in the Gnome camp they seem to do an instant revert to 02.

ComplexNumber
April 27th, 2006, 02:03 AM
:lol: Can't beat a joke like that on a boring Wednesday night. NetInsanity is our new resident jester recently transferred from the Chipped Shoulder Society. the scary part is, i think he actually believes what he says [-X :D.

aysiu
April 27th, 2006, 02:05 AM
I love KDE (it's my main desktop environment now), but I have to admit that the theming is weak.

The themes generally look terrible (I've been all over KDE-look), and most are quite difficult to install. Luckily for me, I like Plastik.

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:10 AM
NetInsanity is our new resident jester recently transferred from the Chipped Shoulder Society. the scary part is, i think he actually believes what he says [-X :D.

Nice, of course, since you added absolutely nothing to the discussion but took up the space you know what that makes you...

Get back under your bridge.

Super King
April 27th, 2006, 02:11 AM
NetInsanity is our new resident jester recently transferred from the Chipped Shoulder Society. the scary part is, i think he actually believes what he says [-X :D.

True, which is why it's useless to put forth effort for a response :) Seems to fit the profile of the angry, sweaty, ranting OSS dev to a T.

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:14 AM
I love KDE (it's my main desktop environment now), but I have to admit that the theming is weak.

The themes generally look terrible (I've been all over KDE-look), and most are quite difficult to install. Luckily for me, I like Plastik.

Break the walls, go to kde-look.org and download any of tenths of thousands of combinations.

You are limiting yourself and i can understand it, but the truth is, no interesting theme is EVER going to be included in Ubuntu repos.

I'd suggest you save default as you like it, or as something else and do the chanbes in increments, you can generally rollback everything... eh, generally, unlike gnome you don't change the actual themes until you hit save or save as.

KDE isn't like gnome, it's actually thought through.

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:16 AM
True, which is why it's useless to put forth effort for a response :) Seems to fit the profile of the angry, sweaty, ranting OSS dev to a T.

Do you knwo the definition of a troll?

There are two in this thread, a lot of posting, a lot of boasting, no solutions, no nothing...

It's almost like the Gnome team invaded my thread.

PatrickMay16
April 27th, 2006, 02:19 AM
The best thing I like about KDE is how you can specify your own colour scheme, and how it applies to applications from all other GUI toolkits like GTK1, GTK2, motif, TK/tcl...
That really made everything look great for me, since I use a few programs which GTK2 replacements can't be found for.

aysiu
April 27th, 2006, 02:21 AM
Break the walls, go to kde-look.org and download any of tenths of thousands of combinations. Oh, I've tried--believe me. One time I had a theme that broke my Konqueror, and I had to delete my ~/.kde directory just to get things back to normal. No, I actually like Plastik.

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:24 AM
The best thing I like about KDE is how you can specify your own colour scheme, and how it applies to applications from all other GUI toolkits like GTK1, GTK2, motif, TK/tcl.
That really made everything look great for me, since I use a few programs which GTK2 replacements can't be found for.

In FC5 i use qt-gtk and run my KDE theme in gnome too, i kinda need to gnome stuff, but not for long, i'd say that the people in at least France, Germany, Netherrlands, Denmark and Sweden, KDE is the future.

Since Novell was huge in Europe and believe it or not, many, MANY networks are still running Novell, Suse is the obvious update, that goes for companies and that goes for state...

However, that guy down there with his gamepad in his hand ready to try to go up to up with me... should i pick him apart or should i leave him to do that himself...

This is an emergancy, jack at the third floor is shaking with anticipation.

stoeptegel
April 27th, 2006, 02:25 AM
No, I actually like Plastik.

Yeah plastik rules. :)
(even more when you set it with cystal decoration@hand painted buttons and "pure technology" color scheme IMO)

NetInsanity
April 27th, 2006, 02:31 AM
Oh, I've tried--believe me. One time I had a theme that broke my Konqueror, and I had to delete my ~/.kde directory just to get things back to normal. No, I actually like Plastik.

You should have gone with some lie how it trashed something because of a let through virus, because...

NO, unless you or someone else physically forsed the trashing, it did not happen[/QUOTE]

And right now you are being tied down in a basement typing with your eyelashes?

See how that works, once a liar, always a liar.

warp99
April 27th, 2006, 03:33 AM
The problem with KDE is that no default application for theming is installed like with gnome. In KDE once you know were the config files are it's very easy to install themes with a simple edit, but for a "modern" desktop it's kind of a throwback. KDE should add a theme manager by default with multi-user config options.

The one gripe I have with gnome is wallpaper. With KDE it's very simple if I want the wallpaper available multi-user I just drop the wallpaper into usr/share/wallpapers. With gnome I have to edit the background properties xml in order to have the wallpaper available multi-user. :???:

ComplexNumber
April 27th, 2006, 04:10 AM
With gnome I have to edit the background properties xml in order to have the wallpaper available multi-user. no you just add it to the /usr/share/backgrounds/images folder (or anywhere for that matter).

poofyhairguy
April 27th, 2006, 04:38 AM
Break the walls, go to kde-look.org and download any of tenths of thousands of combinations.


And do what with these downloads? Thats where I hit the wall with KDE themes.

With Gnome themes I download them in a tar file from Gnome Look. I then drag and drop this tar file onto the Gnome Theme Manager to install the theme. In one sec its ready for use.

If I am lucky some KDE themes have debs. Otherwise I must compile something or manually put some file in some random place (or use alien, or give up).

I don't know if anyone would care to argue that KDE is better or worse than Gnome. I will argue that overall its easier to install Gnome themes. I think the parent poster is saying the same thing.

warp99
April 27th, 2006, 05:00 AM
no you just add it to the /usr/share/backgrounds/images folder (or anywhere for that matter).

If I want wallpaper available to ALL users in the application System > Preferences > Desktop Background you have to edit /usr/share/gnome-background-properties/ubuntu-wallpapers.xml to include the additional wallpaper. Remember this is for all users, not just my local settings. :cool:

ComplexNumber
April 27th, 2006, 05:09 AM
If I want wallpaper available to ALL users in the application System > Preferences > Desktop Background you have to edit /usr/share/gnome-background-properties/ubuntu-wallpapers.xml to include the additional wallpaper. Remember this is for all users, not just my local settings. :cool:
i've never had to do that. strictly speaking, its available to all users - ie all users have access to it. when you change the wallpaper by right clickin on the desktop and selecting 'change wallpaper'(or something like that), it brings up a dialogue where you have a list of local wallpapers, but with the option of adding to it. now when you add to it, it remembers the global wallpaper location. thats no more involved than it is in kDE. as a matter of fact, kde doesn't point to the global wallpapers by default (or it doesn't in suse anyway). you have to store the global wallpaper location as a bookmark, and point to it that way each and every time. the number of mouse clicks is far less in gnome, if thats a yardstick to judge by.

warp99
April 27th, 2006, 06:04 AM
i've never had to do that. strictly speaking, its available to all users - ie all users have access to it. when you change the wallpaper by right clickin on the desktop and selecting 'change wallpaper'(or something like that), it brings up a dialogue where you have a list of local wallpapers, but with the option of adding to it. now when you add to it, it remembers the global wallpaper location. thats no more involved than it is in kDE. as a matter of fact, kde doesn't point to the global wallpapers by default (or it doesn't in suse anyway). you have to store the global wallpaper location as a bookmark, and point to it that way each and every time. the number of mouse clicks is far less in gnome, if thats a yardstick to judge by.

That is correct all users have access to the wallpaper in gnome, but it's not in the list from the Desktop Background app. Each user would have to go and add the wallpaper to there local list. By editing ubuntu-wallpapers.xml the wallpaper is in the list for all users. This reduces confusion with inexperienced users trying to find the wallpaper I just added.

In KDE if you just drop the wallpaper into /usr/share/wallpapers, which is the global wallpaper location with Kubuntu, it will show up in the choose wallpaper list even without a *.desktop reference file. :cool:

NeoChaosX
April 27th, 2006, 06:17 AM
I'm going to second what most people have said here - as much as I enjoy KDE and it's apps (much more than GNOME), installing new themes is still a PITA. I don't like having to search for DEBs for the theme I want, or having to compile source code just to change my window decoration.

Hopefully the changes that I've heard for theming in KDE4 will come to frutition.