Gnome 42 Update and Dark Mode - Settings with Fractional Scaling (gnome-control-center-x11-scaling)

I’m having a lot of wierd issues since Gnome updated on my Manjaro install - some have been previously mentioned here and others haven’t, that I can see.

I run Orchis / Tela for my themes primarily and I am unable to get out of “Dark Mode” - Orchis (as with many themes) has light and dark versions but it seems that I can’t get the light versions to activate. From reading around it seems that the latest Gnome version has introduced a Dark Mode so I guessed that this may be interfering in some way.

Looking at the Gnome articles online, however, the “Settings” app has far more options in it that the “Settings” app in my Manjaro installation. One of these options is an “Appearance” tab which I don’t seem to have. Without this I can’t get to the Dark Mode settings.

Is this a Manjaro linked thing?

As a second issue - I seem to be stuck with the default new Gnome background - Whatever I change my background to, in the “Settings” or “Tweaks” apps is simply ignored by the desktop - It states what it is correctly in the apps themselves but isn’t applying to the desktop.

I haven’t been through a serious Gnome update before so I don’t know if these kinds of disruptions are normal and just tend to go away after a few weeks or if I need to start noodling about to fix stuff.

Any advice welcome!

So all is updated as on their github? You installed it manually or via AUR?

Are those articles for Arch based distros or something else? Like Ubuntu that patches almost everything to work with their theme …

Works fine on my end with the default theme … as is provided now by Manjaro.

And survives reboot. What is the content of /etc/environment on your system?

@bogdancovaciu - My /etc/environment looks like this…

#
# This file is parsed by pam_env module
#
# Syntax: simple "KEY=VAL" pairs on separate lines
#

QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1

#QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="gnome"
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct
#QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE="kvantum"

# Force to use Xwayland backend
# QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb

#Not tested: this should disable window decorations
# QT_WAYLAND_DISABLE_WINDOWDECORATION=1

EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

My Settings app has the following down the side bar (no “Appearance”)…

  • Network
  • Bluetooth
  • Background
  • Notifications
  • Search
  • Multitasking
  • (more from here)

The articles I found on Gnome 42 showed screenshots much like yours above, not specifying any specific distro.

I am not 100% sure how my Orchis is installed anymore - I’ve done it multiple ways in the past and have not long rebuilt my desktop but had scripted up everything before (I THINK i settled on the manual install Github links but I may be wrong) - I will investigate that side of things too (many angles and things not working ATM).

Please provide also:
pacman -Qi gnome-control-center

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Just to add in - I had a couple of floating package updates. I applied them and rebooted and nothing changed.

OK - This looks like this may be my problem…

Name            : gnome-control-center-x11-scaling
Version         : 41.4-1
Description     : GNOME's main interface to configure various aspects of the desktop with X11 fractional scaling patch
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center
Licenses        : GPL2
Groups          : None
Provides        : gnome-control-center
Depends On      : accountsservice  cups-pk-helper  gnome-bluetooth  gnome-desktop  gnome-online-accounts
                  gnome-settings-daemon  gsettings-desktop-schemas  gtk3  libgtop  nm-connection-editor
                  sound-theme-freedesktop  upower  libpwquality  gnome-color-manager  smbclient  libmm-glib
                  libgnomekbd  libibus  libcheese  libgudev  bolt  udisks2  libhandy  gsound  colord-gtk
Optional Deps   : system-config-printer: Printer settings [installed]
                  gnome-user-share: WebDAV file sharing [installed]
                  gnome-remote-desktop: screen sharing
                  rygel: media sharing [installed]
                  openssh: remote login [installed]
                  power-profiles-daemon: Power profiles support [installed]
Required By     : gnome-calendar
Optional For    : gnome-shell
Conflicts With  : gnome-control-center
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 21.03 MiB
Packager        : Mark Wagie <mark@manjaro.org>
Build Date      : Mon 14 Feb 2022 15:12:35 GMT
Install Date    : Thu 28 Apr 2022 21:04:45 BST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

My Gnome control centre is patched to support fractional scaling. I assume that my problem here is because the gnome-control-center-x11-scaling package hasn’t been updated for Gnome 42 yet and is, therefore, missing the new options (And is probably why I also can’t change my Background as I assume they’ve changed how that works and “Tweaks” is pending an update too)?

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something is off on your side because you are using an AUR package of it …

On out end from Manjaro - Branch Compare

image

If you use some AUR package for it too, quite possible to have issues …

This is replaced to support Fractional scaling so my monitors will work properly (I have 1 4k and 1 2k monitor). Looks like that package hasn’t been updated with a new version yet (and there isn’t one on the horizon) and my install is using that instead of the standard gnome-control-center package.

Gnome 42 not currently supported.

This leaves me in a bit of a pickle.

I’ve managed to resolve this by doing very little.

I removed gnome-control-center-x11-scaling and installed gnome-control-center.

The new version of gnome-control-center is offering me fractional scaling options still with mutter-x11-scaling still installed (which DOES have a Gnome 42 package).

I have rebooted and can confirm this ‘sticks’ so it looks as if the gnome-control-center-x11-scaling package could well be redundant now.

@bogdancovaciu - I’ll create a second issue related to Orchis / Theming as that’s now completely collapsed, as others have mentioned.

Hi, I’ve now explained the issue with gnome-control-center for users of the scaling packages in the stable update announcement, I take that as my fault!
However, I’ve updated the HowTo some time ago in the hope to avoid this situation for the users.

Please install gnome-control-center from the repo after this update and reboot.

pamac install gnome-control-center

gnome-control-center-x11-scaling is currently not available for GNOME 42, because Ubuntu is using version 41 for their current LTS and the patches have not been ported.

You can still use mutter-x11-scaling but will have to enable/disable fractional scaling via gsettings.
To enable fractional scaling after installation run:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['x11-randr-fractional-scaling']"

To disable fractional scaling run:

gsettings reset org.gnome.mutter experimental-features

See also here and here.

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I’m quite happy to blame Ubuntu for everything and squint at it in a disapproving manner. :wink:

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