Theming Bazzite (Plasma 6)
Theming Bazzite (Plasma 6)
Decided to try some new distros and this time it's Bazzite. I can't figure out any way to make any kind of custom themes work and look as expected. I tried few themes with transparent windows from "Global Themes (Plasma 6)" category but transparency doesn't seem to work in any single one of them. I've seen general KDE suggestions to try forceblur/betterblur plugins but it requires compiling it manually and since it is Bazzite, it's quite complicated and I couldn't figure it out (if I compile it in distrobox for some kind of Fedora, will it even work for my Bazzite? if I don't use distrobox, how do I even compile it? it needs tons of extra dnf dev packages). I installed Kvantum via rpm-ostree, but turns out, it doesn't style taskbar and console (also firefox, but I could live with that since I probably can find a matching firefox theme). Any suggestions?
It's possible the global theme you installed didn't pull the plasma theme with it. Did you try installing just a plasma theme? Additionally, did you install the theme manually (by placing the files in the correct directory under /.local/share) or automatically (through Get New Themes or Discover)?
I tried both through discover and manually by downloading. For example the most popular theme in the KDE Store called Sweet KDE, didn't have Dolphin and some other things transparent+blurred like showed in screenshots. The only thing which has some transparency is console, but its transparency looks kinda bad, because it's not blurred. I also tried re-enabling blur in effects system configuration, but it doesn't affect it.
Transparency & blur usually requires KVantum, if I'm not mistaken. Looks like you can install it using rpm-ostree. Desktop environment tweaks
Gosh, I wish there were some Docs to read.
I tried even more of manual installing, for example I gave a try installing aurorae windows decorations alone, and transparency never works. Turns out, transparency might be totally broken with Wayland on KDE / Plasma 6, at least there are many issues searchable on this topic and even AIs seem to have learned from somewhere that "In Plasma 6 on Wayland, transparency effects may not work as expected due to various bugs and issues, especially with certain themes and drivers. Users have reported that transparency works better in X11, and some have found that specific settings or themes can help achieve the desired effect."
Damn, turns out it's Blur effect strength that is killing transparency. Found a suggestion to turn it way down and now I actually see transparency working in window decorations. I never noticed it's even possible to configure blur further in desktop effects. Thought it's just an on/off flag.