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Hello Devs, hello @ all here,

i don't understand anything about coding but i love KDE and somethings sounding bad in my hear @ least in last two year.
It's mean that a newcomer has no chance to adjust appearances or mount a drive permanently without become first a geek.
By the way, if someone want hack my computer, he know how to e.g.:

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SUDO_EDITOR=kwrite sudoedit /etc/apt/sources.list

that works with kwrite, don't with kate

Appearances:
Since a couple of years it become heavier to get homogeneous appearances under KDE, this since appearing Plasma5.
I don't know if that happens also under bright-appearances but for sure under "Breeze-Dark".
Note: People working long on PC love dark-themes cause of better for eyes.
Anyway, following this https://www.kde-neon.de/topic/homogene-plasma-darstellung/ link is possible (apart in the past wasn't it) to install a functioning "qt5ct".
Under "Kubuntu LTS" is possible to add a PPA for "qt5ct", but... setting everything to "breeze-dark", the results, always small colorless icons.
Under "Devuan Ascii 2.0" with KDE haven't "Trolltech"-files works without "qt5ct" making all possible/available changes mentioned in the above link.
To the questions:

1. Why

/etc/sudoers.d/workaround_kde5

with following text

Defaults env_keep += "KDE_SESSION_VERSION KDE_FULL_SESSION"

is still missing?
See: https://www.kde-neon.de/topic/keine-icons-und-theme-als-root/
And why is not loaded by default when choosing "Plasma-Session" @ login?

2. Why

/home/<user-name>/.profile

with following text

# set all application using 'qt5'
export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2

# set all application using 'gtk+'
#export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct"

set or enable choosevise "qt5" or "gtk2" when choosing "Plasma-Session" @ login?
What about "gtk3"? is not working @ all? Is here missing the "export" of "gtk3"? Make only "gtk2" "problems"?

3. Why are not icons, different themes, different fonts-type and size (DPI) in

sudo -i systemsettings5

although is necessary to set everything twice?
Do you know or try to open "systemsettings5" or "krusader" under a 4k-monitor with "normal" breeze (bright) with no icons, font-size 8?

4. Why must remove those two files?

sudo mv /etc/xdg/Trolltech.conf /etc/xdg/bak.Trolltech.conf

sudo mv /etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini /etc/gtk-3.0/bak.settings.ini

Why those "symlinks" are not set by default?

sudo ln -s ~/.gtkrc-2.0 /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

sudo ln -s ~/.config/Trolltech.conf /etc/xdg/Trolltech.conf

sudo ln -s ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini /etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

That can also be done when choosing "Plasma-Session" @ login! Or not?

5. Why all the settings under "systemsettings5" both as "user" and "root" don't take any effect and still a "qt5ct" is needed for that? Only exception is Devuan not having "trolltech"-file.
What is doing this "trolltech"? can I remove it? Why @ all twice settings?

6. Almost any user like dark themes, even in Redmond understand that, so, if you install Win10 in the VB you can't change theme to dark without the "product-key".
Why KDE don't set as default a dark theme? E.g. "breeze-dark"? I would prefer a perfect functioning dark theme by default instead and before developing "blur-effect" and/or other things.

7. Why is necessary (today) to adjust theme e.g. in/for "kate" quad = four times under "Qt4" and triple under "Qt5"? Two times in "systemsettings5" and two times in "kate"-itself (as user and admin).
Isn't overkill?

8. Why "KickOff" and most other application don't hold position and dimension like with "Qt4"?
Not only changing "KickOff"-dimension is becoming heavier

Alt+right_mouse_button

but you have to do it each time you reboot or login.
The Root can change this in:

/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/FullRepresentation.qml

from standard:

Item {
id: root
Layout.minimumWidth: units.gridUnit * 26
Layout.minimumHeight: units.gridUnit * 34

to (in my case):

Item {
id: root
Layout.minimumWidth: units.gridUnit * 26
Layout.minimumHeight: units.gridUnit * 50

but even this, by some updates, is set to default "34".
Besides the user/root should use a guide measuring own monitor and calculate dimensions with "rule of three" .

Note: I choose KDE cause of making all settings with a mouse-click (@ that time still working "kdesudo"), that works until 2016-2017. I leave "gnome2" cause of editing "conf's"-files for getting homogeneous appearances and I was a slasher of "Unity", therefore "Qt" and for-all KDE working very well even under BSD and all Linux-Distributions.


Sorry for talking hard with you, I would be able to helping you in coding, but I can't yet.

Anyway, you all admit for sure that a DE (desktop environment) don't only include all functions are running perfectly but also appearances and homogeneity.
Last but not least, dark themes spare not only our eyes but also consumption of electricity.

P.S.: All simple users (like me) are less interested in discussions about "Qt5 or 4", "Gtk3 or 2", "X11", "Wayland", "CSD" or "SSD" (Client/Server-Side-Decoration), "SystemD" or "parallelized OpenRC", etc., all we wish/need is a simple to manage desktop-environment.

Thanks you all in advance for reading this and maybe consider my thoughts.

Well, Homogenous Appearances has a long and tragic story of two frameworks which used to have some cooperation but have since gone mostly separate ways, leaving the desktops (and theme designers) to fend for themselves by trying to provide themes that are consistent between the two frameworks.

Wrt qt5ct: that application was only necessary during the transitory time after Qt5 was released before desktops were updated to build on top of the new version of the framework. It merely provided a way to configure the Qt5 theme. Nowadays both KDE and LXQT (and other qt-based desktops) have built-in support for managing the themes of Qt (4 and 5) applications. Thus there should be no need to apply all of those workarounds to use qt5ct, unless you are using something other than these desktops.
Additionally, KDE's System Settings has a module for configuring the Gtk (2 and 3) theme settings.

Wrt a gtk3 platform theme (or Qt theme), last I'd seen Qt(5) hasn't added a Gtk3 theme, only the Gtk2 one. So far that has been fine, but as time progresses, less applications are available which only have Gtk2 versions, so Qt probably should add a Gtk3 theme. It isn't as simple as just porting the gtk2 theme code over as gtk2 themes and gtk3 themes use completely different mechanisms. However, it ought to be fairly straight-forward as both Qt and Gtk3 support CSS for theming.

As for getting a unified theme for both Qt and Gtk applications, the Arch Wiki has a page which documents the different considerations for achieving a uniform look for Qt and Gtk applications. At the very least, there are versions of the Breeze-dark theme for all of the relevant versions of the different toolkits.

I feel like we're nearly to the point where you shouldn't Qt4 any more. However Gtk2 still has a ways to go before it'll be off the table.

In answer of some of your specific questions:

Question 3: "sudo -i" invokes the command as the target user, invoking that user's profile settings as part of launching the command. As such it will use the root user's (appearance) settings instead of your user's settings. This can be then used to set up the appearance settings for root-only applications to match the rest of the user session, or to set up a custom root appearance to help visually distinguish such apps.
Fyi, the root user's home directory where those config files will be saved should be /root/

Question 4: the bak.<originalFileName> files are just backup copies of those files, in case you mess something up while making your changes you have the original file available to copy back from. (and there's nothing special about prefixing with "bak."; it just needs to be something different but similar to the original file name so you can easily identify it and restore or remove as necessary).
The symlinks you suggest are on the one hand superfluous as it should be using the /etc/xdg locations as the fallback if it doesn't find the file in the user's home directory location, and on the other hand problematic as by default anything outside of your user's home directory will need elevated privileges to change, which means that either you'd need to change the permissions on the /etc/xdg files to be writable by your user or you'll need authorization in order to change your settings.

Question 6: There are plenty of users who will agree with you on that one and plenty (probably still more) who will insist on keeping the light theme by default. I don't think there's enough momentum behind dark themes yet to change the default.

Question 8: The files in /usr/share are managed by the system and subject to being replaced when updating the system. What you can do instead is copy the /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff folder into ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids and make your changes there. Then when the system is updated it won't wipe out your changes.

Thanks airdrick for answer, the copy of "trolltech" let me open "krusader" from own menu with dark appearances.
The copy of gtk2 and gtk3 don't bring anything, sadly, they are cooking their own soup and...
if I follow the advice to enlarge the "scrollbar" is successfull only in "synaptic", "firefox" but dont in "libreoffice".
Besides "Inkscape" sometimes start with dark theme and sometime with bright one.

Let me explain.
Under KDE4/oxigen/obsiadian-dark "just" make the changes in "systemsettings", "kdesudo systemsettings", "qtconfig" and "kdesudo qtconfig" and everything was perfect.
That's maybe the reason why BSD still stick with "Qt4", there is much better homogenousity, just switch under normal-user onces and finish.
Well, the matter was and still is... if I install Kubuntu or KDE-Neon I expect only plasma appearances, I have not to care about the discordance between Gtk and Qt.
What @ moment and since long time we constate is not "freedom", that is a dispute between two children in kindergarten @ costs of users, that's shameful and sadly.

We should consider some aspect of open-source, e.g.:
- "systemd" was quickly developed and implemented by almost everybody, homogenous appearance still not.
- "kdesudo", "gksudo" abolished. From beginn tell us to not start apps with "sudo" without graphic, now? Once "nautilus" let appear a red frame wenn started as root/admin.
- despite of much bigger screens the scrollbars become small and smaller and is not possible to adjust them, particularly not by new-bees.
The questions I pose myself are: What does it mean? What are the reasons for changing that? Why isn't communicated properly? Why first the changes and later-on the workarounds? Should/must open-source accept rules from... by increasing popularity? Why do it "Devuan-KDE" much more better?

The/my conclusion is: Gtk never done something properly, already under Ubuntu 10.04 must edit config-files for adjusting anything, that is now coming to Qt too, and...
that would/should be the Qt future?

A large part of the problem had to do with what Gtk3 did to theme engines; ultimately forcing everything to be replaced with CSS-based themes which broke the relative harmony that existed with Gtk2 and Qt4. So, while Qt5 was a direct successor to Qt4 and the themes could be directly ported from one to the other, themes written for Gtk2 had to be rewritten for Gtk3. The theme engines which supported both Qt4 and Gtk2 could be updated to support Qt5 but wouldn't work with Gtk3.

At least with Plasma 5, the Breeze (and breeze-dark) theme has been ported to all 4 versions of these frameworks. You just may need to edit in multiple places to change from one to the other, but at least homogeneous appearances is still attainable.

As far as the running of graphical programs as root; that's all part of efforts to tighten the security of the system. Running graphical applications as root means that there could be bugs in the GUI code which could be exploited to compromise the system. The newer guidelines are that graphical programs should run as the normal user and then request permission to perform tasks that need elevated permissions as needed. That said, there should still be ways of invoking things as root and setting up root settings and such, but it is a little more involved process.

Almost good news!

Just installed Kubuntu 20.04 (Focal) in the "VirtualBox" and... almost well/good regarding "homogeneous appearances".
After installation made I the update/upgrade, installed "kde-full" + "krusader" and make the adjustments for "breeze-dark" in "systemsettings5" from "kickOff" and "konsole" (sudo -i systemsettings5) and here the results:

- Gtk-Apps using "pkexec" like "GParted", "Synaptic", etc., overtake the adjustments without additional steps. Here the "trolltech.conf" does not existing anymore under "root", remain in "~/.config/", no need to backup "gtk2.conf" + "gtk3.conf" from "root" and make simlinks to "~/.config/" anymore.
- Qt-Apps started with "sudo -i" (e.g.: "sudo -i systemsettings5" or "sudo -i krusader") has the "Icons" (in contrary to the past without icons) but hold/remain the/with "breeze" normal (no "breeze-dark").

Now, we cannot blame "Gtk" if "Qt"-Apps don't overtake "Qt"-adjustments.

The remedy to this disappointing topic is still creating "/etc/sudoers.d/workaround_kde5" and insert "Defaults env_keep += "KDE_SESSION_VERSION KDE_FULL_SESSION"", here the commands:

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sudo nano /etc/sudoers.d/workaround_kde5


copy and paste code + empty line at end:

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Defaults env_keep += "KDE_SESSION_VERSION KDE_FULL_SESSION"



- Copy from browser with: "CRTL+C".
- Paste in "nano" like in "konsole" with: "CRTL+SHIFT+V".
- Store/Save file in "nano" with: "CRTL+O" + hit "ENTER" afterward.
- Close "nano" with: "CRTL+X".

The results of this action is an homogeneous appearances of "Qt"-Apps started with konsole-command "sudo -i".

I mention an "almost" solution for "Qt" because if you start "krusader as root" from "user-krusader" ("Krusader/Tools/Start Root Mode Krusader" as should be) you still get "breeze"-normal and small fonts. The only thing is changed in positive sense... the icons are there.

The other topic = "KickOff"-panel is not changed at all, there you still need to edit:

/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/FullRepresentation.qml

and change the value of "height" at your pleasure:

Item {
id: root
Layout.minimumWidth: units.gridUnit * 26
Layout.minimumHeight: units.gridUnit * 34

I hope first these minor improvements remain also in the final version of 20.04 coming at end of the month and my second hope is that we don't must wait for Kubuntu 22.04 to get full improvements.

Thanks you all for your work and patience.