Summary When launching Dolphin in an LXQt environment, the application fails to correctly load the designated Qt/Kvantum theme (colors and widget styles are partially lost). However, if ~/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf is modified while Dolphin is running, Dolphin immediately updates and applies the correct theme. Environment Steps to Reproduce Set the system widget style to kvantum-dark in LXQt Appearance settings. Close all instances of Dolphin. Launch Dolphin via terminal or application menu. Observed Result: Dolphin opens with an inconsistent "default" look (incorrect colors/borders). Discovery via strace By attaching strace to the running Dolphin process, we identified that Dolphin maintains an inotify watch on the LXQt configuration file: inotify_add_watch(..., "/home/user/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|...) When a manual change is made in lxqt-config-appearance, the file lxqt.conf is written to. This IN_MODIFY event triggers a refresh signal within Dolphin's KConfig/KPlugin cache, which finally applies the correct theme. So open dolphin, change to some theme in lxqt-config-appearance, then back to eg. kvantum-dark, Dolphin almost instantly apply the theme which before refused! Note that i was searching for years for such fix. This also is fixing the nightmare of many how to highlight the 2nd row in dolphin. Workaround / "Fix" The theme can be "forced" to load by programmatically toggling the style string within lxqt.conf after the window has drawn: ``` sed -i 's/style=kvantum-dark/style=kvantum/g' ~/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf sleep 0.2 sed -i 's/style=kvantum/style=kvantum-dark/g' ~/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf ``` Expected Behavior Dolphin should correctly initialize the Qt Platform Theme and Kvantum styles upon the initial MapWindow event without requiring an external file-system trigger. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Dolphin: 25.12.1 KDE Frameworks: 6.20.0 Qt: Using 6.9.2 and built against 6.9.2 Debian GNU/Linux forky/sid (Xcb) Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-lp64 Kernel: linux 6.17.13+deb14-amd64
the whole script #!/bin/bash # 1. Start Dolphin first dolphin & sleep 1.2 # 2. The Path to the trigger file CONF="$HOME/.config/lxqt/lxqt.conf" # 3. Flip the style to "kvantum" (mimics first toggle) # This triggers the first IN_MODIFY event sed -i 's/style=kvantum-dark/style=kvantum/g' "$CONF" # 4. Tiny pause to ensure the file system registers the write sleep 0.2 # 5. Flip it back to "kvantum-dark" (mimics second toggle) # This triggers the second IN_MODIFY event and restores your look sed -i 's/style=kvantum/style=kvantum-dark/g' "$CONF" # click on dolphin, change is applied
You need to report this to LXQT or Kvantum it's not a dolphin bug.
i filled the bug in lqxt bug tracker and i am waiting...
lxqt answer to the bug "They should have been joking. EDIT: Dolphin is full of bad styling codes, like many other KDE apps."
https://github.com/lxqt/lxqt/issues/2814