[SOLVED] No Mageia 8 background on desktop

[johnpenguin]

I have upgraded several installations from 7 to 8, and on a specific one the background image hasn't been updated to the new Mageia 8 image. The new image is displayed during logging in, and then reverts back to the old one.

The mageia-theme package has been installed and the backgrounds are in their own directory (/usr/share/mga/backgrounds), but not in the directory with the other backgrounds. Also they don't show up in Preferences/Appearance/Background, which doesn't happen in other installations.

Is there some way around this without breaking anything?

[JoesCat]

Is there anything particularly different between this PC and the others?

For example, doing some reading, I see xfce holds backgrounds in /usr/share/xfce4/backdrops and checks ~/.local/share/xfce4/backdrops/

Assuming KDE Plasma it appears to find info here:
cat ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

looking at the home directory a few things have shifted and migrated around with time, example:
~/.kde/share/
~/.kde4/share/
~/.local/share/

Something to note is....
/usr/share/* really should be seen as a shared read-only area amongst multiple users. A local user doesn't modify these.
Therefore I'd expect Preferences/Appearance/Background should clone wallpapers into ~/.local directory and use that instead.

During login, I would expect that the background is controlled by root, and once transferred to the local user, then, the user's local settings are used instead.

Reading this https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... e-plasma-5 where a user can potentially have hundreds of backgrounds, it would make sense to copy /usr/share/mga/backgrounds into that local folder. If space was at a premium, you could probably add symlinks from inside your ~/.local wallpaper directory to the /usr/share directory instead. Maybe something looking like this:

Code: Select all

default.jpg -> default.png
default.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1600x1200.png
Mageia-Default-1024x600.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1024x600.png
Mageia-Default-1280x1024.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1280x1024.png
Mageia-Default-1280x768.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1280x768.png
Mageia-Default-1600x1200.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1600x1200.png
Mageia-Default-1920x1200.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-1920x1200.png
Mageia-Default-3840x2160.png -> /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/Mageia-Default-3840x2160.png


[johnpenguin]

I should mention that all installations use MATE, which makes this behavior even stranger. However, all installations were upgraded at different times with different versions of M8, so I suspect something was not right with the most recent version.

I don't see any relevant directory under ./local/share, but I guess I could make a directory there and store the new Mageia 8 background along with a few custom icons. Your observation on proper use of /usr/share makes perfect sense.

[doktor5000]

Does this still occur if you create a new user and login as that user?

[benmc]

this was observed during Mageia 5 to Mageia 6 upgrades : https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20943
during pre-release testing.
it appears to have been resolved by changes to packaging during the testing phase, not as a response to the report.

Bugzilla search found no other mention, but I am not a bugzilla search wizard.

[johnpenguin]

I found a simple solution by using dconf-editor. Navigated to /org/mate/desktop/background/picture-filename and set the switch to "use default value", which by the way is the /usr/share/mga/backgrounds/default.jpg location.

After you switch it on, you can switch it off again if you prefer, and the new Mageia 8 background is now listed along others in the Appearance applet.

Obviously not a critical issue, but as we love Mageia we enjoy each version's new background!