I recently switched from kubuntu karmic to lucid. The upgrade went horribly, in that I had no boot into X after upgrade. So I downloaded and burned a lucid CD, and reinstalled everything without formatting. It took me a while to reinstall everything, but fortunately, since I created users with the same names and passwords, almost every customization was kept.

However, I have a problem which I suppose is properly reported in this forum: it seems special window settings in KDE don't work anymore. I suppose it has something to do with what and where KDE stores as preferences. However, I'd hate to have to reconfigure everything in KDE, so can anybody tell me where special window settings are stored in 4.4 and where they were stored in 4.0? Kubuntu lucid comes with 4.4.2, karmic was using 4.0.some. It looks like the settings editor stores the rules in some place, where it finds them, when you want to edit them, but the window manager looks for them in another place.

Or may it be a different problem?

I'm now more convinced it's a settings problem. I have found KDE's configuration files, and I can at least say for sure they are read by the configuration editor. I just don't know how to check what files KDE uses for reading configuration - normally it should use the same files, but how come it doesn't apply window rules and, as I just discovered, screen saver settings?

You may simply need to make a change, apply it, then reverse it and apply again which should ensure they are used.

bcooksley wrote:You may simply need to make a change, apply it, then reverse it and apply again which should ensure they are used.

Tried it, several times with the special window settings, and one or two times with the screen saver. Didn't help.

In the meantime I discovered another problem: it seems I'm not able to change the login dialog. In the default login screen there's no possibility to boot without X. I'll have to work on this.

Another problem: I can shutdown using the command line, but KDE's shutdown just keeps rebooting. I checked the commands it uses, they seem right.

I'll try deleting (well, backing up) every hidden directory in my home which seems related to KDE, then rebooting, then reconfiguring the window rules, login screen and such. If this doesn't work, and I don't get any advice which works, I guess I'll have to reinstall everything with disk formatting.

Only, I'll have to wait a few days, until I get over a workshop where I need the laptop. Aside from these few annoyances with various settings, it works perfectly.

I found out another thing. The two apps not obeying window settings are PulseAudio Volume Control and Opera. Both are GTK-ish. Amarok, which is KDE-ish, obeys the window rules. Could it be that the window rules mistakenly only work for KDE apps in 4.4.2?

Oddly enough, after installing some more packages (essentially, various add-ons for OOo, I can't remember of anything else), then re-applying the window rules, they started working for Opera and pavucontrol too.

From my point of view, this issue is closed. I wish I could provide more help in reproducing it, but I consier it unlikely that I'll be able to.