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
As I mentioned in OP, I also tried Kvantum, but it didn’t work well because what’s the point of using it if can’t restyle taskbar. One of the most important things to customize for me personally. Ideally would like it semi-transparent blurred/glassy, like a shader or something.
The panel is handled by the plasma theme. I’m not sure what’s the cause of your issues. Normally transparent themes work out of the box on KDE. I’d do some testing on one of my spare computers to try and figure it out, but I’m busy the next couple days.
Yes, it is not handler by Kvantum, which means if you install a Kvantum theme, it will not make your panel match that theme, so you still have to do that yourself. I found out about “Panel Colorizer” widget for KDE Panel, which looks very deep and promising, I’ll try and see, maybe I can come up with something good by combining multiple approaches.
You’re right kvantum wasn’t doing it. Panel colorizer worked for me however. Best of luck