Hello,

I use KDE since ages (I started with KDE 2, I think). However, on my work computer I changed to the i3 window manager. Still, I use quite a few KDE applications (KMail, Dolphin, Okular, KGpg, Amarok, ...). I noticed that running them under i3 causes a lot of trouble...

*) No icons in any KDE5 application, unless QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct" is set.
*) baloo is not started at login, not sure if balooctl start is the recommended method to
*) Chromium uses some other file-open/-save dialog, in contrast to when started under KDE, where is uses the pretty KDE dialog.
*) kalarm starts, even when disabled, because it uses a KDE only method to disable it's startup file in /etc/xdg/autostart
*) File associations are somehow arbitrary and not uniform. Running xdg-open on PDF launches Konqueror, double clicking on the same file within Dolphin launches gimp.
*) Dolphin uses single-click on KDE, double-click on i3
*) No way to launch the system settings panel (beside kcmshell <module>)

I really love to use KDE applications, but running them without the desktop environment seems to be a mess sometimes.

Is there some central thingy I could launch that sets up the appropriate environment, something like gnome-settings-daemon?

Is there work towards improving the KDE applications experience on non KDE desktops?

Thanks for any advices or discussion!

The idea since Qt 5 is that every environment provides a "platform theme" plugin, which decides about most of the things you mentioned (theme, icons, file dialog, single/double click, ...). It is a good idea in principle, but it does currently not play well with non-plasma environments on linux.

One thing one can do is export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=kde. Then applications use the KDE file dialog, and load the settings you configured in systemsettings5. The problem is that the kde platform plugin does not really work outside plasma (esp. regarding system tray icons at the moment), so I do not recommend doing this.

So one would have to either fix the kde platformtheme to work outside plasma (something its maintainers are, from my understanding, not that interested in, so it might be hard) or write a different platformtheme (like qt5ct) which supports all these settings.

Sounds like this situation is rather unlikely to change... That's really sad, especially because KDE's marketing stance, as I understand, has changed from "KDE Desktop" to "KDE Software Collection" and for me it implies that the software works without the desktop, too.

QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=kde makes KDE4/5 applications not even start.

Are file associations and KDE-only semantics in .desktop file also related to the platformtheme?

The KAlaram thing, to me, without knowing what I'm talking about, sounds like a bug. Try reporting it on bugs.kde.org.

If setting the platform theme to kde makes KDE 4 apps not start you did something strange, 4 shouldn't be affected by this at all ... anyways, it's not a good idea at this moment.

I don't know about file associations, is that really affected by the desktop you run? Does that work better on plasma?

scummos wrote:The KAlaram thing, to me, without knowing what I'm talking about, sounds like a bug. Try reporting it on bugs.kde.org.

I posted it in the forum and the developer replied, though he is silent for a couple of days now.
viewtopic.php?f=229&t=131410

scummos wrote:I don't know about file associations, is that really affected by the desktop you run? Does that work better on plasma?

It's really strange.

Dolphin (under i3) sets the file association like that:

Code: Select all

% xdg-mime query default application/pdf
kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop;

Which works when a PDF is opened using dolphin, but not when using xdg-open

Code: Select all

% xdg-open test-schraubendreher.pdf # Opens in konqueror
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: x-www-browser: Kommando nicht gefunden.
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: firefox: Kommando nicht gefunden.
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: iceweasel: Kommando nicht gefunden.
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: seamonkey: Kommando nicht gefunden.
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: mozilla: Kommando nicht gefunden.
/usr/bin/xdg-open: Zeile 781: epiphany: Kommando nicht gefunden.


However, when I manually set the same:

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florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf 
kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop;  # Set by dolphin
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime default kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop application/pdf
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf                             
kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-open test-schraubendreher.pdf # Opens in okular


Mind the difference, the semicolon.


Under KDE

Code: Select all

florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf
okularApplication_pdf.desktop # Set by dolphin, mind the different .desktop file and no semicolon
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-open test-schraubendreher.pdf # opens in okular


Code: Select all

florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf       
gimp.desktop # Set by dolphin
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime default kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop application/pdf
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf                             
okularApplication_pdf.desktop # Seem to does no accept kde4-okular
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime default gimp.desktop application/pdf                     
florian@horus ~/Desktop % xdg-mime query default application/pdf       
okularApplication_pdf.desktop # Huh??


The whole xdg stuff seems to act very weird under KDE.
Strangely, xdg-open seems to not accept the default. Funny thing, there is no kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop file on my system.

About file associations

The whole xdg stuff seems to act very weird under KDE.
Strangely, xdg-open seems to not accept the default. Funny thing, there is no kde4-okularApplication_pdf.desktop file on my system.

There could be multiple mimeapps.lists: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/de ... plications - different applications have been following different (wrong) lists.

Recently fixed: Bug 354179 - File associations cannot be changed if already defined in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mimeapps.list - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354179

Thanks for that information and the pointer to the bugfix. Can you tell, in which version the bugfix is released?

Particurlary problematic, imho, is the X-KDE-autostart-condition=kalarmdrc:General:Autostart:true (http://l10n.kde.org/docs/admin/autostar ... nonce.html) setting in .desktop files. It's a clever way to tie autostart to a specific config setting, but ignorant to the greater Linux ecosystem, being a KDE only setting. Imho, it should be deprecated and replaced by copying the .desktop file to ~/.config/autostart and settings the Hidden attribute accordingly.

Best...!

Mime associations are generally extremely weird on many systems. I find it extremely hard to tell where that information comes from. Firefox and Thunderbird, for example, always seem to pick the worst possible application to open a file with (I remember Thunerbird opening .c files with "wine windows notepad" and .png images with "wine internet explorer 6", no joke). Stuff like "gvim" and "xemacs" and "display" also seem to be popular choices for opening all kinds of files, also from dolphin.

Where do those lists come from? What project would need to be bugged to fix this mess? Maybe somebody can clear things up a bit

scummos wrote:Mime associations are generally extremely weird on many systems. I find it extremely hard to tell where that information comes from. Firefox and Thunderbird, for example, always seem to pick the worst possible application to open a file with (I remember Thunerbird opening .c files with "wine windows notepad" and .png images with "wine internet explorer 6", no joke). Stuff like "gvim" and "xemacs" and "display" also seem to be popular choices for opening all kinds of files, also from dolphin.

Yeah, I've made that experience, too. Especially Mozilla products are notorious to ignore any Linux conventions.

Where do those lists come from? What project would need to be bugged to fix this mess? Maybe somebody can clear things up a bit

You mean those mimeapps.list or the desktop files I mainly talked about in my previous posting?

Can you tell me, if https://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kde-cli-too ... bab4827760 has already landed in a release? I still have a mimeapps.list in the deprecated location ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list, which I think was created by KDE but non in ~/.config, which, I think, is the new location the fix changes to.

I don't think that's yet in the release. Should be in the next release of plasma.

Not being able to change the types properly is one thing, but what actually bothers me more is, where do those exceptionally bad defaults come from?