CachyOS Xfce - broken after instaling icons theme

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I installed CachyOS on an old laptop (HP Pavilion 15 = AMD A8-6410 + GPU 1: AMD Radeon R5 / GPU 2: AMD Radeon R7 M260 + 8GB Ram and HDD). First i went with the default - using KDE and btrfs, but proved to be a bad mix with a laptop HDD (randomly freezing for 1 - 2 seconds). So, i switched to CachyOS + LXTq and OpenBox - using Ext4 - a really good mix performance wise (really responsive for most part) - but the panel kept freezing… sometimes shortly after booting, other times randomly. Tho… “only the panel” - could still use the terminal, even Firefox - or whatever app - i had open, so i could still kill and restart the panel - from the terminal - but couldn’t find a permanent fix so this won’t happen again. Thus, i switched to XFCE It’s not quite as fast as LXTq but good enough and stable, for most part. This CPU and its iGPU is rather old - so there’s some compatibility issues here and there - but most don’t interfere with functionality, except for backlight/brightness - which kept resetting to 100% on restart. But i found a workaround - by creating and enabling - a backlight-save.service & backlight-restore.service service in /etc/systemd/system/.

Anyway, didn’t really like the default Xfce themes - so i added couple of new ones. Didn’t quite like the included icons themes either - so tried couple of new ones. For the sake of compatibility - even went with the ones with the highest rating from: Eyecandy for your XFCE-Desktop - xfce-look.org and did find some which i liked, but then - while trying the 10th on that list: Reversal icon theme - Eyecandy for your XFCE-Desktop - xfce-look.org XFCE crashed - and nothing else work, still had the desktop items - but clicking on either would freeze and couldn’t open the terminal - or access anything, other then resting - and stuck in an endless loop. Where i could still login - but XFCE would crash shortly after. Only solution to this - i booted the CachyOS Live session from the USB stick and removed that icons set - while also editing the icons theme config - and replacing Reversal with Kora. And booted back into CachyOS - and everything was back to normal.

Just surprised that a bunch of icon themes - which are so highly rated - could brake the OS beyond recovery, without booting into the Live CD/USB - and fixing it from there. There’s probably other ways to go about it - like accessing the terminal from boot and such… I don’t know, still new to CachyOS. This is my back-up laptop - cause main one has issues with the displays which makes it unusable till i get it fixed. So on this laptop - i kept playing and trying different Linux distros once in awhile, and was looking forward to try a Arch based distro - since it’s been more than a decade since the last time i tried it (probably closer to 2 decades), but didn’t go so good back then - despite of using the main desktop (GPU drivers were a bit of a mess). So hey, don’t need help - just offering some feedback. My 2 cents as a new CachyOS user.

PS.Windows 11 keeps deteriorating in terms of quality, performance and stability - so was also considering Linux as an alternative. And CachyOS is currently in top of the list on Disrtowatch.

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I’m glad you got it fixed. [SOLVED]

Have you considered using TimeShift in the future?
I’ve been using that to rollback changes if needed and it’s working fine.
Maybe that would give you more freedom to experiment(?).

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Unless it’s a professional system (with important work related apps and files) - i don’t bother with OS back-ups. Instead, i use a secondary partition (or external storage) - for personal files or anything i like to preserve, including apps i use - that’s as much as i keep as back-up. I don’t keep anything important (worth backing-up) - on the OS partition. Don’t really trust OS back-ups efficiency - in the sense that… you could create a back-up for a partially broken OS - but still functional enough - it’s not really bothersome, till a point where an update brakes it for good and you revert back - to a “functional enough” back-up - that could still cause all kinds of issue if the broken parts get triggered. Lesson learned the hard way. I also get lazier - at fixing stuff, while counting (putting to much trust) - on a back-up. Not really a good thing when you’re 40+ As the saying goes “what you don’t use - you loose (dumbing myself down in this case)”.

If it was a work machine - then yes, a back-up is a must - cause… times is money. Not that my time is less valuable - if involving a home/personal setting - but in this case, i afford enough time - for a clean slate and fully functional OS. Tho, might save the personal customization done to the OS - so it’s easier to re-apply in case something goes horribly wrong.

Still, a faulty set of icons -shouldn’t be able to brake the whole OS so easily. LXTq is less refined - and still a rather new mix - so didn’t expect much from it, tho - i did expect more from Xfce “after all this time of refinement”. Some kind of - fail-safe - which reverts to last functional themes- in case there’s issues with a new/custom set. Switching to Xfce removed OpenBox - a windows manager - that helped - while LXTq panel kept freezing, so - might help to add that on top of Xfce - while disabling Xfwm… :thinking:

Yeah, i solved this issue. But those icons are still problematic - can still brake the OS - if anyone tries them. Supposedly an issue with latest version of freetype2 - which brakes KDE Plasma too, there’s an open Github issue on github - by those who encountered this bug: KDE Plasma's System Monitor and Discover fail to open when using this app icon pack (render glyph failed) · Issue #138 · yeyushengfan258/Reversal-icon-theme · GitHub

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Yeah, it is odd that icons/fonts/theming would break any OS.
Thanks for the heads up.