XFCE 4.4 KDE incompatibilities?

milkycow · 11-07-2006, 01:19 AM

I know the title sounds kind of stupid, but it seems like my KDE settings get screwed up <strike>everytime I run something KDE related in XFCE 4.4</strike> randomly while I use XFCE 4.4 (RC1 & 2 both have this problem). My non-default icons in the panel disappear, the submenu icons in the KDE menu turn into the generic folder icon, and all items in kcontrol disappear.
This is on Slackware 11.0 with KDE 3.5.5 from the KDE contrib, and XFCE 4.4 installed via the installers. DBus is from linuxpackages.net.

Does anyone else have the same problem? I just want to know if this is indeed an XFCE problem or if something is wrong with my installation before I go around submitting bug reports.

UPDATE: further testing shows that the problem actually occurs randomly instead of everytime I run a KDE app in XFCE.

attached images for reference: before
after

raska · 11-07-2006, 06:26 PM

Something odd but alike related to XFCE 4.2.3.2 and KDE happened to me recently:
When KDE 3.5.5 was released, I decided to replace the nigh-new KDE 3.5.4 install that came with Slackware 11.0.
To do so, I always compile it full as I don't like to install KDE-related TGZ packages if they don't come from slackware's -current, and they always take sometime to make it there. This wasn't the first time that I would be KDE-less for a day or two. Whilst compiling I work in XFCE as this is my office's machine and I must be working somehow

Just to clear out the following paragraph: I'm used to have 4 desktops in KDE and 2 workspaces in XFCE.
This very time that I was compiling, I noticed that XFCE gave me 4 workspaces instead of the 2 that I had configured before. I gave no importance to the matter and I continued to compile and work. When I had the KDE packages that I wanted already compiled and installed, I went back to KDE to work as I'm used to, though I noticed that KDE was giving me only 2 desktops.
I was kind of surprised and confused. I told KDE that I wanted 4 desktops, and after that I went out of KDE and started XFCE again and ooooh surprise, XFCE was giving me 4 workplaces...
Funny, wasn't it?

I guess that from some point in the past, KDE and XFCE started to share configurations. This hadn't happened to me before and being sincere, I didn't like it

Though I haven't found some way to solve this little bugging issue

milkycow · 11-07-2006, 06:56 PM

It does seem like quite a few WM/DE are using the same configuration for virtual desktops nowadays. Probably something to do with X.org unifying specifications.
Anyway, I have found a solution to my problem. Slackware doesn't set XDG_DATA_DIRS, and XFCE4 doesn't set it with /opt/kde/share in it so "kbuildsycoca scrambles the whole database in kdecache" according to someone on the XFCE bug tracker.
The XFCE devs don't seem to be willing to put a workaround in, so the problem can be resolved by creating a /etc/profile.d/xdg.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# 
#  This script checks if a KDE installation exists 
#  and sets XDG_DATA_DIRS accordingly, since most
#  distros other than Slackware seem to do that.
#  And XFCE 4.4 breaks KDE if it's not set.
export XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share"
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"
if [ -x /etc/profile.d/kde.sh ];
then
    XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/share:/usr/local/share:$KDEDIR/share"
    XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg:$KDEDIR/etc/xdg"
else
    XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/share:/usr/local/share"
    XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg"
fi
export XDG_DATA_DIRS
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS