Ah, I see.
What @Nachlese was likely leading to was moving (renaming) ~/.config and /.local, creating new instances of both, and progressively copying respective contents back a few directories at a time; ~/.cache can simply be deleted as it will be recreated as needed.
Potentially a long and involved process that may (or may not) produce the hoped for results. Are you certain that creating a new account is out of the question?
unclear - if Ctrl+Alt+F3 works, itās not a āblack screenā
and nothing in ~/.config or even no ~/.config at all could have caused the display manager to fail to start.
I just deleted ~/.config (as well as ~/.cache and ~/.local) - and even in that state, the Plasma session started.
Just as a important reminder:
you cannot be logged in in a graphical session while you are working on anything in ~/.config !
You should see the sddm login screen and from there go to TTY (CTRL+ALT+F3).
Thatās not the point - create a new user account (an additional one - call it testuser or whatever) and log in there and see ā¦
That is the equivalent of what Iām trying to describe here.
The new user account will have nothing but whatever files are in /etc/skel ā¦
exactly like what we did here by manually replacing these files.
ā¦ no need to reboot every time - just use ALT+ left/right arrow to get back to the sddm login screen
I always did exactly as I was told: Ctrl+Alt+F3 from SDDM login screen.
Right now I created a new user. No trouble there, gnome apps look exactly like they should.
ā¦ so now you can go and compare each dot file in one account with that in the other
The difference in behavior can only come from there.
There is no other possibility.
even for that task, mc is nearly ideal (as it has got two panes, allowing easy and quick side by side comparison)
ā¦ there are not that many dotfiles - especially after you (re)moved the originals and replaced them with the contents of /etc/skel
there should not be any difference at all
replaced them with the contents of /etc/skel
My first observation: both my .configs contain a handful of gtk* files and directories. If there are no ideas, Iām going to move those gtk configs from the good user to the troubled one. Meanwhile, I point out that thereās nothing like that in /etc/skel:
/> ls -a etc/skel/.config
. .. autostart falkon kdeglobals
/>
UPD
Hereās the root of all evil:
/home> ls -lha alexey/.config/gtk-4.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alexey alexey 45 Nov 28 15:15 alexey/.config/gtk-4.0 -> /home/alexey/.themes/Catppuccin-Mocha/gtk-4.0
/home> sudo ls -lha dobby/.config/gtk-4.0
[sudo] password for alexey:
total 24K
drwxr-xr-x 2 dobby dobby 4.0K Nov 28 18:14 .
drwxr-xr-x 17 dobby dobby 4.0K Nov 28 18:15 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 dobby dobby 4.9K Nov 28 18:14 colors.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 dobby dobby 22 Nov 28 18:14 gtk.css
-rw------- 1 dobby dobby 364 Nov 28 18:14 settings.ini
Thatās probably it, destroy the link and create gtk-4.0 directory with three files. But even if this is enough, it looks like it isnāt supposed to happen by means of just copying /etc/skel. When I created a new user, something more happened. What do you think?
yes - since they are obviously not part of the default set of files (/etc/skel ā¦)
they are created on the fly
remove them and they will be re-created
just remove them - they are auto created - see above
or replace them - if you can do that while maintaining correct ownership and permissions
ā¦ why not look at them, their contents?
compare them - are they different ā¦?
I know - it is not much that is in there - so it should not be hard to spot a difference between these defaults and what you actually have.
this cannot be - you where supposed to (re)move the entire directory ~/.config
this should not exist anymore - except in your backup ~/.config.old
There should not be any such theme settings in a default profile.
itās a symbolic link which doesnāt belong there anyway
Exactly. Thank you very much! So, to reset all gtk settings to defaults:
$ rm -rf ~/.config/gtk*
Reboot 
you have a backup already
you can always go back
just remove the whole ~/.config directory
and replace it with /etc/skel/.config
ā¦ while you are NOT logged into a Plasma session with this user account ā¦
I did
$ rm -rf ~/.config/gtk*
on .config restored from backup. On the original config, in other words. Everything looks as it should, Foliate runs fine. Thanks again!
That was easy!ā¢ 