When KDE is running as the display manager, the GTK2 config file path looks like this:

GTK2_RC_FILES="/etc/opt/gnome/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:/opt/gnome/share/themes//Qt/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:/home/bluebear/.gtkrc-2.0-qtengine:/home/bluebear/.kde/share/config/gtkrc-2.0"

Please note that there is no "$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0" file in this path. This is bad because this is the default position where a common power user would look for it, and even some utilities write it (e.g. gtk2_prefs).

Instead of that, there is "$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0-qtengine", which stays even if the gtk-qt-engine package is not installed at all (!).

The net effect: if a user runs KDE without the gtk-qt-engine, the Gtk2 theme cannot be changed, and typically defaults to very ugly Raleigh. Any attempts to modify config files or using a config utility are simply ignored. This is extremely annoying; the computer really seems like it actively opposes the user.

Finding the root of the problem is pretty difficult; I had to run gtk2_conf under strace and follow the chain of config files it opened to see where the culprit is.

I know it is technically a minor issue, but please fix it to SL10.1; any user who runs Firefox or Thunderbird under KDE will be grateful.