OpenMandriva Lx version:
OpenMandriva Lx release 6.0 (Vanadium) Rock for znver1
Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):
KDE (default)
This is the standard Rock install of libreoffice where I then (successfully) changed the icon set.
Yet when I try to set the theme (essentially the background for the toolbars, statusbars, etc) nothing works. I tried installing all the other LO themes available as extensions to see if they worked. They didn’t either.
You can change some colors in LO, with some options I saw a change, others not so much.
Searching around the web said there might be some kde issues and I should set the VCL plugin. That didn’t do anything.
Any idea?
Below is the list of everything I’ve got installed related to LO from the repo. At this point point my options seem to be rip everything out and re-install, flatpack, appimage.
I run Rock 6.0 too, and the default KDE desktop. I have the issue on my machine as well. You can change the colors somewhat, but the themes are not appearing as advertised.
(By the way, themes are accessed under Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Appearance)
I tried a couple different themes but neither worked. I tried uninstalling a theme, because I was going to try reinstall it. That introduced a new problem: The theme shows as “Installed” in the “Extensions: Color Themes” menu, but the theme is gone from the menu where you actually set the theme. I have no idea right now how to get it back. Be careful about uninstalling themes!
I tried setting an environment variable, as you suggested. Was it the SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN variable? What value(s) did you use?
(I should say, I’m new to OpenMandriva and I’ve set environment variables only a couple times, and only on other Linux systems. Are the conventions similar? It seemed that you can set a temporary environment variable with the export command, that seemed to function the same. And I’m finding for other distros, for a permanent change, you’d add a line to ~/.bash_rc for a specific user, or to /etc/environment for a global change. Is that correct? I saw elsewhere on the forum and from my own poking around that you can set environment variables for a particular program in KDE by right-clicking on something, and selecting “Edit Application”. Is that equivalent to launching them from the console with that particular environmental variable?)
As I'm typing this I looked around and found this over on the LinuxMint forum:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=436853
there at the end they say that the issue we are having disappears in LO version 25.2.3.2
And Rock ships with 25.2.3.1
So this is a bone fide LO bug. I'm not sure what version of LO ships with the latest Rome build check the abf for that.
TLDR:
In order to get something close to usable I went and tweaked the colors in my actual KDE settings (colors & themes). Not ideal but it works for now. Worst comes to worst I’ll install the Flatpak or Appimage
======================================================================
Cool then so it’s not just me
As for the “uninstall” issue I haven’t noticed that but now that you’ve mentioned it I’ll test it out later today/tonight and get back to you. Especially since I can’t get it to actually use the themes anyway…
Correct. You’ll also find them in the “~/.config/libreoffice/4/user” directory tree - but I haven’t had the chance to muck around there in a long time.
kf6 if I remember. Also I set it by using the menu editor (right-click the icon in your kde menu → Edit Application) and you can set localized environment variables.
Yes it is. When I start testing again I’ll try SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN with a value pf qt6 rather than kf6
As for bashrc a better spot for environment variables is the bash_profile. (obviously add the “.”) Anything you do int the etc files does affect system wide, but last I checked it shouldn’t matter in this case. Anything in the bash_profile is loaded on login; bashrc whenever you drop to terminal, so it only gets a copy of the profile values; and then every bash script get only a copy of the bashrc values. But info never flows back upstream. FWIW, here’s my bash_profile (without the LO stuff). Not saying it’s the best, but it works.
# .bash_profile
# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi
# User specific environment and startup programs
# LocalBin=$HOME"/.local/bin"
# Bin=$HOME"/bin"
# PATH=$PATH:$LocalBin:$Bin:$AppImages:$Scripts
AppImages=$HOME"/Apps/AppImages"
Scripts=$HOME"/Apps/Scripts"
#Needed for HUGO
#------------------------
Golang="/usr/local/go/bin"
DartSaSS=$HOME"/.local/bin/dart-sass"
# if running bash
if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
. "$HOME/.bashrc"
fi
fi
# set PATH so it includes Go programming Language
if [ -d "$Golang" ] ; then
PATH="$Golang:$PATH"
fi
# set PATH so it includes Dart-Sass
if [ -d "$DartSaSS" ] ; then
PATH="$DartSaSS:$PATH"
fi
# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi
# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/.local/bin" ] ; then
PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi
# set PATH so it includes user's AppImages if it exists
if [ -d "$AppImages" ] ; then
PATH="$AppImages:$PATH"
fi
# set PATH so it includes user's Scripts if it exists
if [ -d "$Scripts" ] ; then
PATH="$Scripts:$PATH"
fi
export PATH
no worries. This is a community forum where we help each other.
And yes, eventually this stuff will get around into the next version of Rock. But like I said, after spending a few hours on it (it became a personal challenge) it was just easier to install the flatpack.
The appimage requires a system library (because - why follow the appimage spec???); specifically libxml2.so.
We have it installed (albeit a newer version) and when you “install” the older versions (technically symlinks to the new) it still doesn’t work. Though I did get a different error message.
That was when I said enough was enough.
Oh, and if you’re looking for where the themes are stored (with the repo version) they’re here:
I found another minor issue relating to LibreOffice and its setup in Rock and/or KDE. Opening the LibreOffice applications from Application Menu > Office, I would get a “libreoffice does not exist” error if I tried to load LibreOffice Writer. By right-clicking on Writer, selecting “Edit Application”, I had this as the default entry.
By comparing those, I just tried removing the libreoffice (including the space!) for the Command-line arguments field for Writer, and that did the trick. I can now start LibreOffice Writer from the Application menu. It’s not necessarily a big deal, but it might really throw off someone who’s new to Linux.
Anyway, with that aside…
I’ve tried using both of these values for SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN, both on the LibreOffice launcher and the LibreOffice Writer (by right-clicking in KDE) and those didn’t help.
Good to know, thanks! I ran a search for the the name of the supposedly deleted theme Office2003DarkBlue* and there are still files for it present.
So it at least seems the theme files are still on there. (There’s still more stuff in the Office2003DarkBlue.oxt folder too.) Based on this, it’s looking like another LibreOffice bug.
I was having doubts about this part, so I decided to double-check with a new installation of OpenMandriva (I wanted to change my partitioning setup anyway so it was not a big deal). I just re-installed Rock 6.0 (and updated) and the LibreOffice menu items are working correctly. So somehow, I must have mucked up the dialog info for LO Writer. Please disregard that part of my earlier post.
but thanks.
