Hello. I'm running 4.10 in Kubuntu and I'm having a problem concerning the Plasma Desktop theme. Even though I have compositing and the blur effect always turned on, Plasma insists on using the opaque version of the air theme, and oxygen as well. This:

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kquitapp plasma-desktop && rm -rfv ~/.kde/cache-camargo-NBLBX/plasma* && plasma-desktop

seems to solve the issue, but rebooting the computer reverts to the opaque theme.

This is a pity because the new Air Theme looks beautiful, the best ever imo.

Now, if I just logout and login again after clearing the cache and restarting plasma, it doesn't revert to the opaque theme, only rebooting does it. Maybe it's because starting kde from a fresh boot is slower? And then plasma-desktop starts before kwin and sets itself to use the opaque version of the theme, since it doesn't detect composition nor kwin?

I would be very happy if there was a solution for this issue, or at least a way to force plasma-desktop to use the translucent theme version. Thanks in advance

If you logout, then reboot and wait for the computer to finish booting after reaching the login screen, does this occur?
I suspect you may be correct with your guess that Plasma is starting before KWin has enabled compositing however (in which case toggling compositing off and then on again may help..)

bcooksley wrote:If you logout, then reboot and wait for the computer to finish booting after reaching the login screen, does this occur?

I tried this, and the problem still persists. After every bootup, it always looks like this:
http://i.imgur.com/k82h4PR.png

So I decided to rename the "opaque" folder in the theme to prevent it from loading this version. It seems to have solved the issue partially. Still, it looks more opaque than it should: http://i.imgur.com/blhb9O8.png (how it looks), http://i.imgur.com/JMULVER.png (hot it should look like). I'm still puzzled by this difference in looks. Maybe it's a no-blur version of air, since plasma still isn't detecting composition, but i'm not sure...

Does toggling compositing off and then on again cause Plasma to use the translucent version as it should be?

I have the problem that the blur effect sometimes doesn't work.
The theme is transparent but it doesn't have the blur effect. It feels also awful because I can not distinguish the tooltip text from the background text.

bcooksley wrote:Does toggling compositing off and then on again cause Plasma to use the translucent version as it should be?

No, Plasma still uses the opaque theme even if I turn compositing on and off.

bsidb wrote:I have the problem that the blur effect sometimes doesn't work.
The theme is transparent but it doesn't have the blur effect. It feels also awful because I can not distinguish the tooltip text from the background text.

I used to have these problems before. But for me, Blur always works. The windows created by Plasma seem to lack the necessary flags to use Blur, but even if plasma ignores it, tooltips always blur what's behind them successfully.

camargo wrote:

bcooksley wrote:Does toggling compositing off and then on again cause Plasma to use the translucent version as it should be?

No, Plasma still uses the opaque theme even if I turn compositing on and off.

bsidb wrote:I have the problem that the blur effect sometimes doesn't work.
The theme is transparent but it doesn't have the blur effect. It feels also awful because I can not distinguish the tooltip text from the background text.

I used to have these problems before. But for me, Blur always works. The windows created by Plasma seem to lack the necessary flags to use Blur, but even if plasma ignores it, tooltips always blur what's behind them successfully.

These days plasma works well for me~

Does simply restarting Plasma Desktop (not the computer or your session) fix this problem, or is purging the theme cache essential to getting it to behave correctly?

bcooksley wrote:Does simply restarting Plasma Desktop (not the computer or your session) fix this problem, or is purging the theme cache essential to getting it to behave correctly?

Before, purging the cache was essential.

Well, this is weird... Now it seems to have solved itself. The panel is no longer opaque and looks right, with shadows and everything. I've restarted a few times and logged on and off, and it holds. I hope Plasma keeps that way.

Interesting. I've marked the thread as solved for now - but if the problem recurs again, please reply to this posting and unmark it as solved so further investigation can take place.

I still have this problem. Half of times Plasma loads the no-blur version of his them. Regenerating cache and reloading it solves the problem, but it occurs again after some boots. Note that sometimes it solves itself without doing anything.

Running Kde 4.10.

You may suffer from this bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179042
As i wrote in c46 and c50 there, the patch in reviewboard has drastically improved the situation for me, to the point of almost not experiencing the issue. Unfortunately, it didn't get in for 4.10, but, as Thomas said, there *could* be either a fix/workaround for 4.11, or should be fixed in Qt.