Since 4.3.90, Air comes with new widget backgrounds (squares instead of circles). I totally dislike that. Any option to turn the "watermarks" in widgets off?

I think the 'air for netbooks' style doesn't have those circles in the background

The circles were cool, it is the new squares I don't like. Tried the netbook style but my panel looses its background with this style.

I see you're using opensuse.
I seem to have an Air openSUSE theme. It still has the circles in it and probably will have till openSUSE 11.3?

Are you on KDE 4.3? The changed the circles from squares in the first RC of KDE 4.4...

Yes i am, but the opensuse (customized) air theme didn't change (yet)

Is this contained in any *-branding-opensuse package? Need to find that out, because I removed those packages...

I think it's in
kdebase4-runtime-branding-openSUSE

That worked (partially)! Some widgets now do have the circles background again, some others do not (control bar, krunner etc.). I guess that is a caching issue, but removing /var/tmp/kdecache-username, ~/.kde4/cache-machinename and ~/.kde4/tmp-machinename did not fix it. Any more packages?

I thought the squares were a bug, but apparently it's a feature, I dislike them too...way too obtrusive

I fear that - due to the fact the artwork freeze has taken place - this is the final look of 4.4!

I prefer to set my own wallpapers, so I'm not seeing it, but it started to be used as background in kdepim, so that you saw it when reading in imap folders or akregator feeds. I disliked it intensely, but the newest version seems to have been soft-focussed, and it doesn't seem anything like as offensive. I still wouldn't choose it as a wallpaper, though

I'm not talking about the wallpapers, I'm talking about the widget backgrounds.

I still see circles everywhere. I suggest you try installing other *kde*branding-openSUSE packages then. I don't know in what packages all the backgrounds are.