Things with Tumbleweed are getting tougher again… sigh…
The current Tumbleweed is running KDE, Plasma and Qt 5. “System Settings” does set the version 5 settings only. However, some applications still rely on Qt 4, and they do look awful on Tumbleweed since they use a different font and point size for their menu bars and everything else.
There is an app named “Qt4 Settings” in the application kickstarter (twice). It allowed me to set the font to Noto Sans, 10 pt, Regular. This made the “old” applications show a nice look in the same way as the Qt 5 apps. HOWEVER, these settings do not seem to be sticking, they are lost after the next (re)boot. I did run the “Qt4 Settings” both in user and root mode, but that didn’t help. BTW, the Regular setting got lost right away after saving and exiting the Qt4 Settings app.
How do I permanently set the font for Qt4 applications to the same Noto Sans, 10 pt, Regular as the Qt5 apps are using? Please help.
Remark: In Leap 42.2, the Qt4 Settings to begin with right after the OS installation ARE set to the same Noto Sans… font as Qt5 has. Why not in Tumbleweed???
Maybe try to delete Trolltech.conf completely, and reset the font in Plasma5’s “System Settings”.
I do remember cases where that file got “broken” somehow…
First off, Leap 42.2. KDE does all well in this respect. It has the same font settings for Qt5 and Qt4, and they don’t get changed.
Tumbleweed KDE seems to be quirky here. My observations:
Trolltech.conf (in /home/username/.config) seems to be a (the one and only?) settings file for Qt4.
Using the “Qt4 Settings” app from the Tumbleweed app starter, font settings can be changed to the desired Noto Sans 10 pt, and Trolltech.conf gets changed accordingly. Except that “Italic” is always staying like that, no chance to go to “Regular”. However, app menus do use the regular font, not italic.
Upon (re)boot, Trolltech.conf gets an automatic update in some mysterious way, and font settings are changed back to Sans Serif 9 pt.
Deleting an old Trolltech.conf merely causes a new Trolltech.conf to be written (e.g. when starting a Qt4 app or booting), which is shorter (50%) than the old one and uses Sans Serif again.
Using the current Plasma System Settings (systemsettings5) doesn’t do anything to Trolltech.conf.
My - doubtful!!! - resort is to set the properties of Trolltech.conf to read only (i.e. take my own user write permission away). Then it is no longer overwritten at boot, but of course no settings changes could be made.
Of course, I don’t want to use this resort. I just would like Tumbleweed KDE to behave in exactly the same way as Leap 42.2 KDE does regarding Qt4 Settings.
Thanks in advance for any further help or some fix to Tumbleweed.
KDE4 applications use the KDE4 settings in ~/.kde4/share/config/kdeglobals.
But apparently plain Qt4 applications do indeed only use Trolltech.conf (I wasn’t aware of that, but just verified it).
Try to install KDE4’s systemsettings though (package kdebase4-workspace-addons) and change the font settings with that (i.e. run “systemsettings” instead of “systemsettings5”. That does apply the setting to plain Qt4 apps too.
Although I haven’t tried yet whether they “survive” a logout/login…
Upon (re)boot, Trolltech.conf gets an automatic update in some mysterious way, and font settings are changed back to Sans Serif 9 pt.
According to the thread I pointed at, something seems to apply the settings to Qt4 too on login (to Plasma5), but fails apparently (or does something wrong).
If I’m bored I might try to investigate what goes wrong here, but don’t hold your breath…
Btw, I am using 42.2 here, but with the latest Plasma5/KF5 packages from additional repos (so quite similar to Tumbleweed in this regard).
PS: maybe try to disable the setting “Apply colors to non-Qt applications” in the “Colors” Systemsettings module. Maybe it overwrites/deletes the font settings by mistake when trying to apply the color settings to Qt4 (though I’m not sure whether this option actually prevents that).
Browsing some more around many Linux forums, it seems this problem is quite old, but never was solved entirely. There is quite some advice, e.g. running “Qt4 Settings” (/usr/bin/qtconfig) as root, or installing kdebase4-workspace-addons even when the main KDE system is 5, fiddling manually with Trolltech.conf, and so on. It might seem that none of these is working in all instances.
Feels like my head is spinning at such a simple thing like fonts…
Thus, even more, I would like to receive an advice that DOES work, isn’t doubtful, doesn’t destroy other settings. And the question remains - how is this issue solved in Leap 42.2 ??? ??? ???
Well, I doubt that any KDE developer still uses Qt4 applications.
Qt4 is dead since years…
And it does work for KDE4 applications (which do still exist, even in the latest official KDE Applications releases) AFAICT, as mentioned.
Thus, even more, I would like to receive an advice that DOES work, isn’t doubtful, doesn’t destroy other settings. And the question remains - how is this issue solved in Leap 42.2 ??? ??? ???
Leap 42.2 has of course older Plasma and KF5 versions than Tumbleweed.
So it’s probably not “solved” in 42.2, but maybe a regression in Plasma 5.9 or something. I.e. a bug that didn’t exist yet in Leap 42.2.
I just had a quick look at the source code, and unfortunately this option really only affects the color settings.
The font settings are always exported to Qt4.
And the module asks Qt5 for the “general system font” which it then writes as standard font to the Qt4 settings, so apparently Qt5 always returns “Sans Serif” there.
The question is why, and whether this is a bug in Qt5 then or maybe in the KDE integration.
Although it seemed like being useless, I did install kdebase4-workspace-addons in order to run the “old” systemsettings. Its font settings start out with Noto Sans in all but one places, the Window Title has Sans Serif. Changed and stored. But ultimately this did not affect the Trolltech.conf settings, which - as you found - miraculously are returned to Sans Serif at every (re)boot or deletion/recreation.
So, unfortunately, I am left with that hack of withdrawing my write permission from the Trolltech.conf file in ~/.config for the time being. This makes the Qt4 apps display as they should.
Dear wolfi323, would you be willing to help out and file a bug report wrt this Qt4 issue to Tumbleweed KDE or Qt4 or whatever is suited best? As we saw, this quirk is in Tumbleweed only, not in Leap 42.2.
BTW, there is one more point where I think Tumbleweed has regressed severely behind Leap 42.2: The keyboard and language (probably more generally locale) settings. While Leap properly picks up German keyboard and language during the install process and makes them known systemwide right at the first boot after install, Tumbleweed is not exactly successful in doing so. The Tmblwd installer does accept those settings, but they are not set completely at first boot after install; they need to be changed in a couple of places in YaST and “System Settings” (systemsettings5).
Otherwise, I should like to take the opportunity and bring out a toast to openSUSE and Tumbleweed in particular. When transitioning from long years of Windows to Linux last year, I did test quite a number of distros. By now, my multi-boot system has Tumbleweed in the first place, then Leap 42.2 in the second place, and finally Mint 18.1 Cinnamon third as a last resort for Ubuntu software packages. Windows 10 is running under VirtualBox only; unfortunately, it still is needed since some software (e.g. CD ripping) is closed-source under Windows only, and other capabilities for audio replay are not available readily in open-source for Linux. Anyway: This one’s for Tumbleweed! It runs smoothly and at some points faster than Leap, and fortunately I didn’t experience those most dreaded shortcomings of a rolling release yet… although, maybe these Qt4 issues might count as such…
Yes, systemsettings never wrote to Trolltech.conf.
This is synced back at login (and to gtk2/3 and Xdefaults too).
Dear wolfi323, would you be willing to help out and file a bug report wrt this Qt4 issue to Tumbleweed KDE or Qt4 or whatever is suited best? As we saw, this quirk is in Tumbleweed only, not in Leap 42.2.
I am using Leap 42.2 and can reproduce this issue as mentioned.
So it’s either a regression in Plasma 5.9 or in Qt 5.7.
From the quick look at the code, I would rather suspect the latter.
As Qt 5.9 is going to be released tomorrow, I’d prefer to wait for that though before any further action.
BTW, there is one more point where I think Tumbleweed has regressed severely behind Leap 42.2: The keyboard and language (probably more generally locale) settings. While Leap properly picks up German keyboard and language during the install process and makes them known systemwide right at the first boot after install, Tumbleweed is not exactly successful in doing so. The Tmblwd installer does accept those settings, but they are not set completely at first boot after install; they need to be changed in a couple of places in YaST and “System Settings” (systemsettings5).
That’s totally unrelated to Plasma though.
Plasma doesn’t change the keyboard settings at all by default and takes over the system ones, this hasn’t changed.
So, this is either a bug in YaST (or the tools it uses), or something else interferes like e.g. ibus.
Regarding the language, we have a problem currently with the bundle-lang-kde packages (which don’t exist in Leap). Installing the corresponding xxx-lang packages instead should help.
Actually there is a bug report already: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378262
It even contains an analysis of the problem and a proposed fix (although I don’t think the fix is 100% correct because it would use “Sans Serif 9” as default if no font is set in KF5’s kdeglobals, while KF5 itself actually uses “Noto Sans 10” as default).
PS: A workaround would be to redefine “Sans Serif” font (which is actually just an alias, no “real” font) in YaST->System->Fonts->Prefered Families.
But that would of course only affect the font family, not the size.
As i learned in my inaugural post/thread https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/525654-VirtualBox-in-Tumbleweed, you clearly have wide & deep Linux / openSUSE expertise. I had assumed therefore that you probably personally also used TW. Discovering now that instead you use Leap [albeit modified] surprised me a lot… & made me wonder/worry that maybe i’m making a mistake in my currently-considered project to migrate from Maui to TW [ie, if even a hardcore expert like you doesn’t use it, then who am i to be so presumptuous as to think i should use it?]. I know this is 100% off-topic here, but maybe you might pls kindly point me to another thread where this is already discussed, or even [some rainy day] begin a fresh thread wherein you might set out your own decision criteria… pls?
I discovered this thread only a few hours ago, & was rubbing my eyes in disbelief. I had planned today to raise my own post on exactly this problem… my inability to alter the default font type & size for the applicable programs in TW using Qt4 Settings has been perturbing me. I’m pleased that there’s an existing thread… AND that a solution is coming.
Well, it’s not that I decided to use Leap over Tumbleweed, it’s more that I have not decided (yet?) to switch to Tumbleweed, which “only” exists for a bit more than 2.5 years in its current form (before that, “Tumbleweed” was actually just an addon repo with selected upgrades for the standard openSUSE release, that is now known as Leap)…
One particular reason is that I’m always short on hard disk space. The constant updates in Tumbleweed would likely cause me problems (even now I have to install updates “in chunks” sometimes).
In the end the decision just boils down whether to use a rolling distribution or not.
If you don’t mind doing that, Tumbleweed is a very good choice IMHO (maybe the best one available?).
Some people prefer to have a stable release though that is frozen on release day (and only gets bugfix/security updates), for different reasons.
There are several threads where this has been discussed in some form (cannot point you to one at the moment though), but there’s no general rule when to use this or that I’d say. Everybody has its own preferences, and everybody has to decide this (and other things) for him/herself.
If you always want the latest software versions, TW is definitely the better choice. Adding additional repos to Leap to update selected things only can cause problems, especially if you add a lot of them or don’t know what they are about.
OTOH, by using a stable release like Leap and adding additional repos, you can choose what parts you want to upgrade to the latest and greatest and keep the rest on a “more conservative” level (though as mentioned, exactly this can cause problems or even break your system if you don’t know what you are doing).
My opinion for your specific case: if Tumbleweed works for you, and you are not annoyed by the many updates, stick to it.
Oh that’s very interesting - thank you for your info. I know i am now officially hijacking this thread, but here’s a few comments:
In the last ~3 1/2 years i’ve tried many different distros & DEs [mainly in VMs; only rarely have i actually reformatted an SSD & changed my “real” OS], but i had always completely avoided any rolling release - frankly the idea terrified me as a Linux convert still with her training-wheels on. However, when i recently “discovered” openSUSE, read up on the history [some of which you mentioned], & watched a couple of Richard Brown YouTubes from which i discovered the revelations of openQA, Btrfs, & Snapper, i began at that moment to very seriously contemplate that TW really might be viable for me… it seems to be a “have cake & eat it” proposition, as [if i have kinds sorta understood] openQA ensures my TW gets tested-stuff not raw stuff [ie, minimising the disaster risk], whilst Btrfs+Snapper means that even if a disaster did occur, i should be able to roll back to pre-disaster pretty easily & quickly. That really changed my mind on rolling-release vs LTS [but [i]not all rolling releases; only TW specifically; i still wouldn’t consider any other rolling release].
Never before did i consider myself as necessarily “needing” all the very latest stuff, but on the other hand the Kernel & Plasma versions in Leap 42.2 are “too old” for my liking [older than what i already have in Maui]. I especially want to get to Plasma 5.10.x, given its nice improvements. To that extent, i really am enjoying TW… albeit having to reboot every day or every other day after the updates is becoming tiresome & is certainly disruptive.
Hence i wondered if i could arrange Leap to still be “stable” but use repos for the later Plasma, so i might still benefit from newer Plasma, but not need quite so many reboots. This morning i fired up my Leap VM & tried mucking about with adding the QT5, Applications & Frameworks repos, then running “your”:
You would need to actually add those repos to your system first, before you can switch to them.
I.e. something like:
sudo zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Qt5/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/ KDE:Qt5
sudo zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/ KDE:Frameworks5
sudo zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Applications/KDE_Frameworks5_openSUSE_Leap_42.2/ KDE:Applications
Then the “zypper dup” line should work.
Note that those repos are basically untested though.
These are the development projects for Tumbleweed, they contain the latest stuff before it is submitted to Tumbleweed and goes through openQA.
If you have further questions, please open a separate thread though. As you wrote, we are getting very off-topic here…
Btw, to get on-topic again, the fix for the Qt4 font settings problem is in KDE:Frameworks5 meanwhile, and should arrive in the standard Tumbleweed repos in a few days hopefully (when the package went through review and testing).
I won’t start a new thread, as your info seems to make my mind up to stick with TW… & furthermore [to stay on-topic] your wonderful info that
the fix for the Qt4 font settings problem is in KDE:Frameworks5 meanwhile, and should arrive in the standard Tumbleweed repos in a few days hopefully (when the package went through review and testing).
is a strong illustration of the TW benefit … ie, Users getting fixes for stuff asap.
Yes, i noticed that yesterday, & was inclined to acknowledge it here… until The Universe decided to intervene… & took further use of Lappy/TW away from me.
It runs smoothly and at some points faster than Leap, and fortunately I didn’t experience those most dreaded shortcomings of a rolling release yet… although, maybe these Qt4 issues might count as such…