James Tyrer posted on Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:54:01 -0700 as excerpted:
> Well, I have again wasted most of an hour trying to make a simple change
> to KDE and have not succeeded. Did someone miss the point that hiding
> things does not make KDE easier to use?
>
>
> Does anyone know how to change the X root window image (it is behind the
> desktop but sometimes is viable) for KDE? Or, if it is hard coded, what
> is its name and location?
It's quite possible you're seeing the default X root window image,
nothing to do with KDE.
If it's a kind of hashed up multi-color possibly repeating-tile possibly
random-color (I never looked closely enough or researched it to see)
mess, that's the X default. I remember seeing a comment about it in one
of the X or kde init files here on Gentoo, where it was replaced with a
solid black, with the comment to the effect that the X default "made
users heads explode" or something similar. =:^) Of course, upon reading
that I just /had/ to comment out that line, to see what the default
actually /did/ look like, and decided I actually preferred it that way,
since it wasn't /that/ bad, and unlike the solid black it was being
replaced with, the default was distinctive enough I'd be able to identify
it immediately (tho description is something else entirely; I'm not sure
I did it justice, above), for troubleshooting and the like.
But that was some time ago. I expect I've long ago replaced/upgraded the
script where I had made that change. Let's see if I can find it...
... Found it! The script here is /usr/bin/startkde , owned by the
kdebase-startkde package, of which I have version 4.7.2 installed. That
file appears to be from kde-workspace-4.7.2.tar.bz2, where it appears as
kdeworkspace/startkde.cmake . (I believe the kde-workspace tarball was
split from kdebase in either 4.6 or 4.7. Before that, the file should
therefore be in the kdebase tarball.)
The script contains the following as lines 28-34 (reformatted slightly
here for posting, the if test line isn't continued in the original, and
one of the comment lines wraps slightly differently):
# Set the background to plain grey.
# The standard X background is nasty, causing moire effects and exploding
# people's heads. We use colours from the standard KDE palette for those
# with palettised displays.
if test -z "$XDM_MANAGED" || \
echo "$XDM_MANAGED" | grep ",auto" > /dev/null; then
xsetroot -solid "#000000"
fi
It seems there's a conditional now that I don't recall. Now it's only
replaced for those running a DM (XDM only??), not for those like me who
start kde from a shell login.
So if kde's doing anything, it would seem to be that it's replacing the
default root window image with solid-black.
Otherwise, perhaps you're talking about the screen that appears (at least
here, where I start kde from a text login) during kde initialization,
before plasma-desktop, etc, start and upon which the startup splash
screen appears. If so, that's definitely kde as it's one of the kde
wallpapers. I don't know where the default is actually coded, but
obviously, one very hacky way to change it would be to replace that
wallpaper with a different one of the same name. Alternatively, once you
know the name of the wallpaper, it should be simple enough to grep
sources and config files for it, and change it correctly.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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