F21 - Huge icons [SOLVED]

[David A. De Graaf]

On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 03:41:04PM -0500, David A. De Graaf wrote:
> Icons are taking over the World!  In Fedora 21, that is.
> I've always been afraid that the GUI generation would eventually
> make Linux completely unusable, and now they've almost succeeded.  :-)
> 
> In a few F21 GUI panels the icons are grotesquely large - 1.75 inches
> square on a 15 inch wide monitor.  Normal size would be ~0.25 in.
> This makes the panel nearly incomprehensible.  This occurs in, eg,
>     system-config-printer
>     system-config-firewall
>     virt-manager
> 
> A screenshot is attached of virt-manager running an instance of Centos
> 7 on the Fedora 21 host. 
>   [No, it's not!  GUI's are OK; images of them are too big for this
>   list.  Sigh...]
> The virt-manager icons are so big that that
> the virtual window cannot be enlarged to a proper size.
> 
> A possible clue to the error are the messages in the root window
> following the virt-manager command:
>   [root at datwiz ~]
>   # virt-manager 
>   [root at datwiz ~]
>   # 
>   (virt-manager:1994): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error:
>   gtk.css:67:18: Not using units is deprecated. Assuming 'px'.
> 
>   (virt-manager:1994): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error:
>   gtk.css:67:20: Not using units is deprecated. Assuming 'px'.
> 

I have tracked the problem to left-over configuration files as a
consequence of my usual practice of freshly installing a new Fedora
in alternating root partitions, but retaining the /home partition
unchanged.  
The problem was due in some mysterious way to the contents of
~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/
because, when I deleted that directory and restarted Xfce, the icons
returned to normal size.  (The directory and contents were recreated.)

That's pretty obscure, hence this report.

Acting on a suggestion from my son, Stuart, to try another user,
I found that a new user account did not have the huge-icon problem.
That led to an exploration of the countless . files in my home
directory.  What a mess!  Hidden files are an abomination.
It seems that programmers create them willy-nilly but never, ever
remove them.  The amount of disk space that's wasted is incredible.

But that's a problem for another day.
Happy New Year, all.

-- 
        David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
        dad at datix.us         www.datix.us


The most terrifying words In the English language are:
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
	- Ronald Reagan