I've been playing around trying to get gnome to work properly, and as part of this initiative I installed icewm-gnome, metacity-setup, and a couple of other harmless-looking packages. While doing this, I noticed that there were some fresh packages for other things, so I did a dist-upgrade. So far so good.

Gnome is still not working properly, which is no big deal since I'm a KDE user, but now my KDE apps look awful, and I've lost the KDE theme manager. The gnome apps that run under KDE look great, though... It used to be the other way around -- the KDE apps looked good, and the gnome apps looked clunky.

How do I fix this?

Ross

Do you use KDM or GDM? If you use GDM, changing to KDM might fix your problem.

I also think that if you don't need Gnome, removing Gnome with Aptitude should be pretty safe. (I've installed and removed Gnome using Aptitude, without any ill effects on the rest of the system or other installed apps.) Launch Aptitude, browse (with up and down cursor keys and the Enter key) to "gnome -> main" directory and highlight the "gnome" meta-package. Press the "-" key to mark this package to be removed, then press the "g" key.

Notice that Aptitude shows the planned changes before actually executing them. At this point you can hold any packages you want to keep by highlighting them and pressing the "=" key. If everything seems to be OK, press the "g" key again to proceed with the Gnome removal. If you accidentally remove packages that you need, it's easy enough to re-install them.

With a recent KDE update, there were some, well I guess bugs isn't the correct word but it sounds like the same thing I had. You have to update QT then you will get back much of your KDE looks. Others have asked why QT isn't in there as a dependency since with the last KDE update because without the QT update KDE loses many styles. Update QT and things will be much better. There is also separate updates for like the plastiq theme.

The other problem you probably have (if you use transparency in any menus or windows) is the really awful psychedelic? for want of a better word effect.

In you need to change to what I believe is "xrender blend" as opposed to software tint which is the default for the transparencies and it will be fine.

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I googled around and found out it was a Qt problem. Qt was updated when I did my dist-upgrade, and this is fact caused the problem. Maybe there's a new Qt package that I need. Do you know?

Thanks again.

Ross

Perhaps it only updated your existing qt2, rather than installing qt3. Check for the qt3 libraries.

And if I remember correctly, I also needed the most recent kde artwork packages (including style, theme, window) to get back all my eyecandy after the update. But I didn't get back my pillowy widget styles until I installed the latest (at that time) qt3

It is possible to get your KDE looking like it was

Thanks for the help.
I have done a fair bit of looking around about this issue, and this is what I have discovered:

If you are running the Debian testing distribution (as I am), and you have recently upgraded to the new Qt 3.2.3 (by way of dist-upgrade, for example), the kde styles will no longer work because they were compiled against an earlier version of Qt. A KDE version of the styles compiled against the current Qt is not yet available in Testing. The only way to get the kde styles to work again is to upgrade to Sid (unstable). You cannot upgrade only the kdeartwork-styles package in Testing (with the Sid Unstable/Sid version, for example), because the required version depends on other KDE components that are only available in Sid/unstable.

I'm no expert, but I think that if you have this "disappearing styles" problem in Testing/Sarge, you have four choices:

1. Wait until the Testing (Sarge) distribution is updated with KDE that is compiled using Qt 3.2.3. I have no idea when that will happen (though probably soon).

2. Downgrade Qt to the earlier version. I assume this can be done with pinning (see the apt howto), and with sources set to repositories with the earlier Qt version (the Xandros sources, for example), but I haven't tried it.

3. Dist-upgrade to Sid. I thought about doing this, and I may still do it, but I'm on Xandros, and it's picky about upgrades.

3. Compile your own KDE using Konstruct. That's what I'm doing, and though I'm completely inexperienced with compiling, it seems to be going without a hitch. I'm just following the instructions in the readme file.

I got lucky, Ross, I run unstable. KDE is a strange and wonderful thing Can't tell you the run of "fun" I have had with it over various upgrades but like I said, lucky that I am mostly unstable - get these things first. I lost su over a KDE upgrade to 3.2 along with ark, but got them back the next day (dubious luck, though ) Think KDE was responsible for losing my debian menu too (got that back in 24 hrs or so as well)

Yup, it seems like unstable is the way to go. But I do not want to completely trash my Xandros install, which is based on testing, so it's been a challenge.

But I'm happy to report that I installed the latest kde by way of CVS, made some small changes to a few pointers in login files, and I now have my kde eye-candy back (plus an upgrade to kde 3.2.3). Xandros is safe; I just login with a different user to get the new kde.

Now, if only I could install some of those Sid styles from kde-look.org ...