Strange VirtualBox GUI behaviour on Fedora 10 64-bit

[dirkgently]

I have three guests configured in VirtualBox 2.2.4 running on Fedora 10 64-bit. My desktop environment is KDE 4.2.3. I installed VirtualBox from the VirtualBox-2.2.4_47978_fedora9-1.x86_64 rpm. For reasons which aren't clear to me, whenever I left single click a guest in the GUI to select it, the guest is selected but VirtualBox also then boots the guest. I saw the same behaviour with VirtualBox 2.2.2 which also I installed from the rpm.

In contrast, a single left click on a guest in VirtualBox 2.2.4 on a Windows XP host will just select the guest and not boot it. That's the behaviour I want on Fedora. Is this a bug in the 64-bit Fedora 10 release? Is my single left click somehow being interpreted by VirtualBox as a double left click? Alternatively, is this behaviour configurable? I couldn't see anything obvious in preferences or in ~/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml.

[slanbarn]

Havent used kde 4 very much, but in kde3.5.x singel click=doubbleclick and hover=select was the default behaviour...

Maybe there is a problem with your settings in kde, if both versions have this behaviour, and it work "as expected" in windows...

EDIT: to check, in fedorna, in kde4 in a filebrowser, does a singel-click opens a file or selects it?

[dirkgently]

Yes, I've just now figured it out. VirtualBox is following the single and double click policy setting of KDE. I regard this as a bug as the single and double click setting is supposed to apply to files and folders in file system views but not other GUI elements of an application like VirtualBox's guest list. As examples of correct behaviour, toggling the single and double click policy has no effect on the single and double click selection behaviour in Thunderbird or (for a Qt example) Amarok. The same should hold true in VirtualBox.

[Sasquatch]

Maybe, but you forget one thing. I used a different Qt engine once, called Sculpture. I did not have any say in what it should do with single click and double click, because I don't use KDE. When I used that engine, I got the same thing you are describing, clicking on the VM to select it, made it boot. So this is NOT a VB issue, but a Qt engine problem/setting. If you use a different engine, you would have no problems. VB is simply following the rules of the render engine for its GUI.

[dirkgently]

Okay. I've tried the following widget styles: CDE, CleanLooks, GTK+, Motif, Oxygen, Phase, Plastique, and Windows. When single click is turned on for files and folders, the single click behaviour in VirtualBox only occurs with Oxygen. VirtualBox will obey whatever qtconfig-qt4 says the widget style will be rather than what KDE says the widget style will be (unless qtconfig-qt4 has "Desktop Settings" set for the widget style for indirect KDE control). So I'll configure KDE to be Oxygen as it was and set qtconfig-qt4 to Plastique. Which Qt widget is VirtualBox using (or descending from) for the guests display?

[dirkgently]

Since Oxygen is the default widget style for KDE 4, it'd be worth including some information about this in the known issues chapter of VirtualBox's help document.

[Sasquatch]

You can do two things to get it either fixed or noted.
The fix: Report a bug at the KDE devs, or Trolltech (which develops Qt) to change the behaviour of the engine, or make it configurable.

The note: Create a bug report in the Bugtracker (a separate account is needed) and make it a feature request. Say that it's for a change in the User Manual, and explain the situation.

[kimberg]

I'm using 32-bit Fedora 10, and here's how I fixed this problem. Open the "System Settings" control panel (Fedora has settings all over the place, find the panel that has a "General" and an "Advanced" tab). On the General tab, in the fourth section, is an item called "Keyboard & Mouse." Go there, and select "Double-click to open files and folders." The next time you start virtualbox, it should be better behaved.

Hope this helps some.

dan