Hi. I am fairly new to Linux. I just installed KDE and although I really like the functionality, the GUI is ugly... in particular, the way that it renders forms is ugly. Here is a screen capture of my home page:

http://kramerica-inc.net/google-image.png

Notice how you can't tell where the text box is really? Anyway, maybe I'm being picky, but I figure that there's some way to customize that. Any help?

You can install other KDE themes. Here are some KDE themes that you could choose from:

http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/61/

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Steve Stites

There are many ways to customize what you're having issues with.

First off, it looks like you're using either the KDE Classic style or Highcolor Classic style. You can change KDE's style in Control Center.

Second, by default Firefox won't use KDE's style. In your install, it probably is set to use the GTK-QT theme engine, which makes GTK/GNOME applications use KDE's QT style. This is good in the sense that gtk/GNOME applications will somewhat match the look of native KDE applications, but it's also somewhat sluggish and it can be confusing because it doesn't also match the feel. In particular, KDE's setting to use single-clicking instead of double-clicking is ignored by non-KDE applications.

You can change the gtk theme to something else, without affecting KDE's style. Assuming gtk-qt is installed, there should be a setting for this in KDE's control center. Alternatively, you can manually edit the text file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (this is what I do).

Third, Firefox has its own theme engine independent of gtk. In Firefox, using the default theme means using the current gtk/GNOME theme. You can also install Firefox themes. These themes will change the look of Firefox, without changing the look of anything else.

Gracias. I changed it to use the QtCurve style. Very nice.

kde-look.org

You could install Enlightenment 16 which is lovely to look upon especially with transparant Eterms. And then install Gnome and KDE and put 'gnome-panel &', in .xinitrc or .xsession or whatever file you use to start X, before ! enlightenment as the *last* line. (in fact I put '! gnome-panel &' don't know if it makes any difference.)

Then make the panel semi transparent and hide it. You get most of the functionaliy of KDE from the panel.

Something like:

Esetroot /dirtyPic.bmp ; Eterm --theme Escreen-glass &
gnome-panel &
enlightenment (but with much more elaborate options.)

Press Alt-F2 then type KControl, press enter. Tweak whatever settings that you can find. That's the whole point of KDE.
That or use GNOME, you might like that better.