How to keep scrollbars visible in Eclipse Mars and Neon on Kubuntu 16.04

Question

After setting up a new machine with Kubuntu 16.04 and Eclipse Neon (4.6), I observed the following behavior of all scrollbars in eclipse:

• vertical scrollbar is shown in a kind of thin style
• when moving the mouse over the vertical scrollbar, the scrollbar became visible with standard width
• when don't moving the mouse for about 1 second, the scrollbar became invisible (smooth fading out)
• when moving the mouse anywhere in the e.g. editor window, the vertical scrollbar became back visible (in thin style)
• Note: The horizontal scrollbar behave different as it's get only visible when touched by the mouse pointer (hover)

About the thin style scrollbar, I like this feature. But I dislike the feature that the vertical scrollbar disappears completely.

Does anybody know how to customize this?

I'd tested the following setups in all:

• Kubuntu 16.04 & Eclipse Neon → scrollbar became hidden
• Kubuntu 16.04 & Eclipse Mars → scrollbar became hidden
• Kubuntu 16.04 & Eclipse Luna → scrollbar stays visible
• Kubuntu 14.04 & Eclipse Mars → scrollbar stays visible
• Kubuntu 14.04 & Eclipse Luna → scrollbar stays visible

Trying out with different themes (Window → Preferences → General → Appearance) without success regarding scrollbar visibility, even when I disable theming completely.

My current workaround is to set SWT_GTK3=0 environment variable before starting eclipse. This seems to keep all the scollbars visible but with the disadvantages that the scrollbars are also shown when not needed (e.g. less content in editor window) and also the above mentioned thin style feature is not longer available.

Edit 2018-01-17: Tried GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 as mentioned be @gregh works also. Shows the scrollbars in a different graphic style than SWT_GTK3=0. Now matches my system UI design better than as with SWT_GTK3=0.

Answer 1

This worked for me:

export GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0

Answer 2

Using Linux Mint 18 and eclipse 4.6, I meet the same problem.

And in Xed, Mint's default GUI text editor, it also occurs.

So this 'feature' is from OS rather than eclipse.

It can be resolved via:
Start menu --> Effects --> Overlay scroll bars (turn off) --> (re-login)

Linux Mint 18 is based on Ubuntu 16.04, so it should also work on Ubuntu.