After a certain rash experiment (hyprland installation) I lost a great deal of normal functionality with my Plasma desktop. Reinstalling all the packages helped a lot:
$ sudo pacman -Qqn | sudo pacman -S -
Unfortunately, some minor (configuration?) issues remain. Among them, Gnome app theming, and, specifically, Foliate reader. The latter just fails to start. Probably, GUI failure: I can see foliate on the system monitor, I can kill it, but no more. I tried
Thanks! In the terminal, I’ve got an endless flow of
(com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate:36205): Gtk-WARNING **: 10:27:36.970: Unknown key gtk-modules in /home/alexey/.themes/Catppuccin-Mocha/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
(com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate:36205): Gtk-WARNING **: 10:27:36.979: Unknown key gtk-modules in /home/alexey/.themes/Catppuccin-Mocha/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
No program window, unsurprisingly. This gtk thing is a leftover from Hyprland, sure. What can I do about it?
~/.local/share> yay -Ss foliate
aur/foliate-2 2.6.4-3 (+3 0.01)
Version 2 of Foliate: A simple and modern GTK eBook reader
aur/foliate-git 2.6.4.r103.g1613ac8-2 (+11 0.01)
Simple and modern GTK eBook reader
extra/foliate 3.1.1-1 (592.7 KiB 3.4 MiB) (Installed)
A simple and modern GTK eBook reader
~/.local/share>
based upon the error messages, you should try setting another theme
It is a GTK app - there is some compatibility layer config to optically present GTK apps well in Plasma / QT environments.
Don’t know much about it. Never touched the defaults.
I have a Plasma VM as well - will see what it looks like there.
Result:
works just as well as the above install, which was done in Xfce4
No idea.
I get a warning as well - but it still works:
(com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate:1720): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:07:03.437: Unknown key gtk-modules in /home/jo/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
I just removed it again (pacman -Rns foliate) - these where the packages that where installed with it:
I haven’t got a warning. I got an endless burst of warnings, nothing else. Also, you probably have a vanilla gtk install, whereas I got something custom. Can I revert to vanilla without stumbling too much?
I tried it on an (almost) pristine installation of Xfce4
as well as on KDE/Plasma, also nearly pristine.
Both in separate VM’s.
It works flawlessly in both.
While it is pretty easy to go back to defaults, I don’t know how easily you’d stumble.
and: my method may not be the best - perhaps KDE (or Manjaro) has implemented a kind of “one click” solution to reset to defaults - I just don’t know.
I’d simply delete the ~/.cache and move ~/.config and ~/.local out of the way
and then copy the defaults from /etc/skel
But that needs to be done without the user session running,
so either logged out and from a TTY
or logged out of this user session and logged into a different user account.
~> cd /etc/skel
/etc/skel> ls -a
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc .config .dir_colors .Xclients .xinitrc .zshrc
/etc/skel> ls -a .config
. .. autostart falkon kdeglobals
/etc/skel>
I just refrained from messing with skel. Not right away
This hint from Arch Wiki works. The theme still doesn’t look like Adwaita, but the Foliate app starts, at least. Curiously, the warning message now looks exactly like yours:
You must have misunderstood me. /etc/skel/* holds the default values - you do not “mess” with these files.
That is simply the blueprint of the default values.
You remove ~/.cache and move ~/.local and ~/.config in your $HOME directory - and replace it with what is in /etc/skel
But you can’t do it while logged in into your Plasma session.
This cannot be running when trying to replace these files.
Log out and in to a TTY to do it.
I always recommend “mc” (midnight commander) as a file manager - no need for using the command line then.
sudo pacman -S mc
I don’t much like Wikipedia - but it has good description and pictures of it.
log out of graphical session
then
CTRL+ALT+F4 to switch to TTY
log in
rm -rf ~/.cache
mv ~/.local ~/.local.bakup
mv ~/.config ~/.config.backup
cp -r /etc/skel/.config ~/
CTRL+d to log out again
ALT+left or right arrow until you arrive at the display manager again
where you log in normally and will find a default Plasma Desktop
if you don’t want to use the file manager recommendation
Is Foliate Electron based?
(I’m on a Mac currently, and can’t easily check).
I recall recently seeing a recommendation to update adwaita-icon-theme-legacy to version 46.2-3. This apparently solved a few theming related crashes recently. Here’s the Stable Update 2024-10-10 reference:
I tried to follow your advice, with one reservation: I didn’t touch ~/.local, because it contains 6.5GB and I can’t believe that “moving” isn’t lethal. Besides, there’s nothing .local in /etc/skel. Of course, I’m open to discussion
What I actually did:
Reboot, but instead of logging in again, Ctrl+Alt+F3
Nothing much as a result. Of course, I lost come configs, which is no big deal, because I can easily revert to my dotfiles. My problem remains in place: all the toxic gnome/gtk settings are there.
Will you please publish your successful manipulations line by line?
First of all:
you didn’t and wouldn’t lose anything when following my example.
I did recommend using a file manager like mc - because you can more easily actually see what you are doing while in TTY.
Deleting the ~/.cache does no harm at all.
And the rest → ~/.config and ~/.local was moved in my example → not deleted, but just renamed, if you will
It will all still be there and can be reverted just as easily.
But you decided to not move ~/.local - because it apparently contains a lot of stuff.
That should be fine - but the stated goal was to reset the Desktop to it’s default. ~/.local isn’t part of that as you correctly saw
mv ~/.local ~/.local.backup
can be reverted by: mv ~/.local.backup ~/.local
or just by: cp -R ~/.local.backup ~/.local
You also did substantially change the commands I gave as an example.
For instance this: cp -R /etc/skel/.* ~
which I gave as this: cp -r /etc/skel/.config ~/
the effect of which is that you not only copied /etc/skel/.config
but everything in /etc/skel including all the dotfiles there
but that will do no harm
Also you used: cp -R ~/.config ~/.config.old
… instead of: mv ~/.config ~/.config.old)
which does just that - you now have a copy, but the original is still in place.
That is where all the “toxic” dotfiles come from - you never removed them.
