Issues with consistent theming and IceWM

[Member ajusa]

Hello everyone,

I recently installed Antix on an old Dell Latitude I had lying around, with a Core 2 Duo T9300. I have had two small issues that I’ve ran into:
1. How can I make QT apps look the same as the GTK theme I have set? I’ve followed https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications#QGtkStyle in the past but after setting that environment variable to be equal to gtk2 in my ~/.profile, qBittorrent still looks the exact same.

2. IceWM is really really slow to start and restart – like 30-40 seconds it’ll hang before a new theme is applied or after I log in. By contrast, JWM restarts almost instantly, so I don’t think that my hardware is too slow. How can I figure out the problem here? Has anyone else ran into a similar issue with IceWM being painfully slow to start up?

Thanks!

[Member Xecure]

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Hi, ajusa. What version of antiX are you running (base or full)?

There is a small bug reported here, where you need to edit the /etc/environment file and add a new line at the end of the file. Then you can use qt5ct to change all qt5 theme options (including using gtk2 theme, and selecting icon theme, font theme, etc.)

On the other item, please share your system info
inxi -Fxz
and let us know if you are running antiX on live or installed.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member ajusa]

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Apologies for not including more information, I really should have done that!

I will try the instructions you linked to for qt5ct.
EDIT: I tried those instructions but that only allows me to set the QT theme. I want the QT theme to look the same as the GTK2 theme, so I don’t think that’s the way to do it?

I’m running 32 bit antiX base installed to an SSD. Here is the output of inxi

System:
  Kernel: 4.9.0-279-antix.1-486-smp i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
  Desktop: IceWM 2.8.0 Distro: antiX-21_386-base Grup Yorum 31 October 2021 
  base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Latitude D830 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Dell model: 0HN341 serial: <filter> BIOS: Dell v: A11 
  date: 04/03/2008 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 83.3 Wh (99.5%) condition: 83.7/86.6 Wh (96.7%) 
  volts: 12.4 min: 11.1 model: SMP DELL YD6238 status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo T9300 bits: 64 type: MCP 
  arch: Penryn rev: 6 cache: L2: 6 MiB 
  flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 9972 
  Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/2501 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 800 2: 2000 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell 
  driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting 
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 965GM (CL) v: 2.1 Mesa 20.3.5 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 82801H HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.9.0-279-antix.1-486-smp running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: no 
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express 
  vendor: Dell driver: tg3 v: 3.137 port: 10c0 bus-ID: 09:00.0 
  IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network 
  driver: iwl4965 v: in-tree: port: 10c0 bus-ID: 0c:00.0 
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 3.57 GiB (3.0%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Kingston model: RBU-SNS8350DES3128GP 
  size: 119.24 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 116.68 GiB used: 3.57 GiB (3.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 128 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) 
  dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 22.0 C mobo: N/A sodimm: SODIMM C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 
Info:
  Processes: 145 Uptime: 1m Memory: 3.44 GiB used: 342.7 MiB (9.7%) 
  Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 Packages: 1304 
  Shell: Bash v: 5.1.4 inxi: 3.3.06 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by ajusa. Reason: code block
• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by ajusa.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by ajusa.

[Member Xecure]

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ajusa wrote:

I’m running 32 bit antiX base installed

Thanks for this info.

After installing qt5ct, install the qt5 gtk2 theme module.
sudo apt install qt5-gtk2-platformtheme
That should let you switch to use gtk2 themes. It comes preinstalled in antiX 21 full, both qt5ct and its complements (qt5-gtk2-platformtheme qt5-style-plugin-cleanlooks qt5-style-plugin-motif qt5-style-plugin-plastique qt5-style-plugins), but not in antiX base to save space.

On icewm, I will check on a VM if 32bits icewm has issues (my last 32-bits machine dies over a year ago, so cannot test on a real machine).
No-one has reported any delays in icewm boots on 32 bits, so it may be either a config change or something else. Did the default icewm configuration have a delay when loading before making any appearance changes?

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member ajusa]

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Ah, got it. I may end up just reinstalling the full version, I was under the impression that the only difference was libreoffice.

Yes, I believe there were loading issues even in the live-usb. I saw the wallpaper, and then had to wait about another 20-30 seconds just for the taskbar + conky to be visible. Thank you for testing and looking into this!

[Member PPC]

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@ajusa – I may suggest that before trying to reinstal, you try changing desktops to a min-icewm one, and check if icewm loads almost instantly (as it should)? There may be some problems in the startup file, perhaps?

P.

[Member ajusa]

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Went to Menu > Desktop > Other Desktops > Minimal-IceWM and it still took 20-30 seconds for me to see anything other than the background itself.

Not sure what you mean by the startup file, I’m new to Antix (but not to Linux). Do you mean the session startup file that I can access through the Control Centre? The only modifications I’ve made are adding pulseaudio and redshift.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by ajusa.

[Member Xecure]

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ajusa wrote:

Went to Menu > Desktop > Other Desktops > Minimal-IceWM and it still took 20-30 seconds for me to see anything other than the panel itself.

Thanks for confirming it is icewm the main problem. Minimal-icewm disables all startup, conky, wallpaper and any other program that may affect session startup, limiting to ONLY launching the window manager. This confirms the issue is with icewm.

I unfortunately cannot reproduce. It may be specifically related to the CPU, so I will search to see if there is any bug report with Intel Core2 Duo T9300 for icewm.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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The only modifications I’ve made are adding pulseaudio and redshift.

Remove them and see if it improves the situation.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Also is there any relevant information in ~/.desktop-session/log file(s)

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member ajusa]

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Alright, I’ve gone ahead and booted up the base image in a live-usb to make sure that my personal set up isn’t affecting anything at all. I still do experience very long loading times for IceWM in the live-usb.

Here’s some of the output from the ~/.desktop-session log files (current.log):
https://pastebin.com/jkU9HQPi

I don’t see anything too weird in there, maybe you guys will understand it better though.

[Member ajusa]

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I just tried the 64bit full runit option for Antix – that works beautifully. I was only using the 32 bit version since it uses a bit less ram, but honestly with a 4gb machine I shouldn’t really be worrying about that. However, when I booted with the legacy kernel, I got the same issue. Seems like some weird Linux kernel behavior then that got fixed in newer kernels. To confirm this, I tried upgrading the kernel on my initial 32 bit install to 5.10. That also worked just fine, and IceWM started almost instantly, it’s scary how fast it is now.

Thanks for all the help!

[Member Xecure]

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Great to know, ajusa. Thanks for finding the solution and posting it here for future users.

I was getting desperate searching for something related to the CPU, but it was simpler than that. Who know why the older kernel has this issue with icewm. It is good you found out, as now we have something to recommend for similar cases.

Regards.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

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