In my endeavour to make the panel opaque (and only the panel) I accidentally crippled the start button, see image https://imgur.com/TgPCqUT
What I did was copy the this folder
/usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/
In the copy I edited this file default/widgets/panel-backgrounds.svgz/panel-backgrounds.svg by changing the value of ‘opacity’ to 1 literally everywhere I saw it. I thought for as long as I have a backup I could at least try this approach.
I re-compressed the file
gzip -9 -S 'z' panel-backgrounds.svg
and recompressed the entire theme as tar.gz to make it readable by the theme manager in system settings.
As as soon as I loaded this theme the button disappeared. I tried switching to other themes, but all to no avail, the button remained. Loading my tar.gz of the vanilla theme backup gives a failure (it won’t install the theme). I checked in the ‘start-here-branding.svg’ icon in the theme folders (eg.) ‘/usr/share/icons/oxygen/scalable/places’ and they all look like actual icons, not like the mess it gives me when I actually apply the theme.
When I look at your image, I don’t see a broken icon. Or, at least I don’t think it is broken. I think that’s the default icon for plasma 5.
My suggestion – reinstall plasma5-workspace-branding-openSUSE
That might need to be a forced reinstall. I think that’s where the opensuse start button icon comes from.
No guarantees. And this might undo the theme changes that you made.
You shouldn’t copy /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/ as that is for “KDE4” as the path indicates.
And KDE4 themes are not (fully) compatible to Plasma5.
Rather use/modify /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/default/.
sudo zypper in plasma5-workspace-branding-openSUSE
and did a reboot just in case.
Nothing seems to have changed at all.
You were right by the way, that is the default plasma 5 icon. I just have no idea why it changed to that from my default icon after switching theme (which is essentially what I did, as I didn’t change themes before on this pc). So I’m not sure if the way my desktop is behaving right now is the right way or if themes should change the launcher’s icon.
As for my theme changes, they were completely for nought. Aside from, as wolfie323 pointed out, having done the changes in the wrong folder, there were also way too many references with varying numbers for opacity in the file, that they must be relating (at least in part) to the transparency of elements in relation to other elements on the panel. I also noticed an ‘opaque’ folder within the widgets folder of some themes, which also had a ‘panel-background.svgz’ in it. That’s probably the file I might have to edit. But I’m too confused, I fear I might have to change a reference in multiple files to accomplish this simple change. I spent 8 hours straight yesterday learning about xml, svg and all that (thanks w3school) to be able to read the code of the file and find out how the opacity of the panel is dealt with. But many references of ‘opaque/opacity’ were connected to some matrices bulljoy, and that was just the tipping point for me.
Just a little update, and in case someone is googling the same question.
As mentioned here and elsewhere, /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/<theme>/widgets/panel-background.svg (or *.svgz) or the same in ~/.local/share/plasma contains the style of the panel, including opacity (no idea what the ‘opaque’ folder is then). I managed to kill transparency by changing the opacity value to 1 wherever I found it, but that also fragmented the panel (looks very weird). Some of the opacity values clearly relate to the elements in relation to each other, not to the background, as there are easily over 100 results for ‘opacity’ in the the .svg. I looked at two background-panel.svg’s, one from the default theme (which had fewer differing values, with 0.9 something apparently pertaining to the opacity of the panel itself) and one from a theme out of the kde store, which had a lot more varying values. Going forward I think the best way to edit them is either by script, hoping opacity of the panel relates to only one value, or if it’s possible by loading the background-panel.svg into inkscape or such and change opacity from there if that’s possible.
The start button icon seems to be theme independent. I still don’t know how to change it, but I’m sure it should be a whole lot easier compared to changing the panel’s opacity.
Yes, I think using a tool like inkscape is definitely the best way to modify/create a theme…
One note though: the graphics elements in the theme’s svg files must have proper group names, otherwise they won’t be found.
The start button icon seems to be theme independent.
That’s not completely true.
It is taken from the desktop theme, but if it is not found there or broken, it is taken from the icon theme instead (that’s the same with all other elements too btw).
The icon shown on your screenshot is the one from the icon theme.
The question now is what changes you did exactly.
If you copied files to ~/.local/share/plasma, they will override the system files in /usr/share/plasma/ (so reinstalling packages won’t help).
Try to move them away in that case, that should “fix” your problem.
And/or it might be that some cache is broken/outdated. Plasma only recreates the caches (and reloads the actual svg files) if the theme version changes.
So, try to delete ~/.cache/plasma* too.
I still don’t know how to change it, but I’m sure it should be a whole lot easier compared to changing the panel’s opacity.
Actually you can easily change the “start menu” icon by right-clicking on it and going to the settings.
It should also be possible to “Reset Icon” there to get back to the desktop theme’s graphics if you ever changed it.
