# HOWTO: Running Qt5 applications (e.g. Dolphin) without KDE



## Nicola Mingotti (Oct 13, 2018)

*Problem*. You are trying to run Qt5 applications without KDE, you don't see incons and a lot 
of error messages appear in your shell, like "Pixmap is a null pixmap".

*Release*. I never saw this problem appearing on FreeBSD-11.1, it starts from FreeBSD-11.2.

*Caveat*. I found this solution valid for my system and I was expecially interested in having Dolphin
to work. It shoud hold valid for all other Qt5 applications. I run WindowMaker, you may find this 
procedure useful if you run other non KDE/GNOME window managers.

*References*. I wrote this short howto after finding this informative page which I reccomend you read.

*Long term solution*. It would be nice some kind of information to be shown to the users when they
install Qt5 applications to avoid a lot of people running into this issue. I mailed kde@freebsd.org 
before posting this how to. 

*Procedure*.

1] Install `qt5ct`

2] Set this variable in ~/.bashrc or appropriately in your default shell configuration file.

```
export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct"
```

3] Install an incon set, the first I found working was package kf5-oxygen-icons5-5.50.0

4] Select the icon set with qt5ct, that is run qt5ct and then select Icon Theme --> Oxygen

5] Open a new terminal, check QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEM variable is defined and then try to run Dolphin,
it should work.

END


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