I’ve used both Plasma KDE and Gnome DE with EndeavourOS, while the Gnome provides a better experience on Wayland, some KDE default applications are really good compared to Gnome ones. The file manager Dolphin is an example according to my personal preference, which is better than Nautilus.
So I tried to install Dolphin on Gnome, but it looks weird and different from what I experienced under KDE. The panel looks ugly and lacks icons for some types of files, which are necessary to be fixed.
The solution:
Install
qt5ct
to configure the appearance of Dolphin(since its GUI is QT based), you also need
breeze-icons
package (can be installed by yay or pacman) since Breeze is the default theme in Plasma KDE.
next, append this line
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct
to your system environment variables at /etc/environment
Run qt5ct and under the tab of Icon Theme, choose Breeze and apply.
voilà, now the Dolphin looks the same as it is in the KDE environment.
Proper handling of environment variables that depend on which DE you use, should be done in user folder relevant/appropriate files, using conditional tests for the active environment.
To my understanding, the problem with Dolphin in Gnome is that Dolphin (as well as KDE) is QT based, while Gnome is GTK based, so the themes that come together with Gnome can’t be applied to QT applications, where the qt5ct and QT themes like Breeze become necessary. So that means, any QT applications used in a GTK environment(with GUI problems) can be solved in this way, am I right?
As a newbie to Linux, this is not very clear to me. Could you be more specific(like for my situation), or where can I learn more details about appropriate environment variables settings for DE?
The solution is to use KDE. Wayland works fine on it. There are lots of distributions that run KDE with Wayland. Matter of fact installing Arch with KDE desktop uses Wayland.
I just don’t understand why linux users want to take a desktop designed to use certain packages and try to implement them on a desktop that is designed to use something entirely different. It makes no sense to me. Hmm i think I’ll use some Gnome extensions on Plasma.
I wouldn’t dream of using Nautilus on my KDE. Well, I wouldn’t in general, because it’s awful, but regardless… Even if it were good, it would only be a reason to use ɢɴᴏᴍᴇ. Not a very good reason, but still… You get what I mean.
Exactly!