Hi DK,
There is a colour settings dialogue window, but there are no tabs for the window-background or the fonts, but all other things like the 3d work area, etc.
The Maya Help files explicitly say to use the MayaScheme file in the local path. Topic = "Maya for Linux limitations"
Looks to me that this issue is exclusive to Linux
(Linux) Setting color resources
You have to set color resources manually since the SGI color schemes are not available to help set colors.
Workaround
You can use the file MayaScheme to customize the resources used. Copy the file from /usr/aw/maya/app-defaults to
$HOME/app-defaults.
The scheme file looks like this:
...
fixedWidthFont: --fixed-medium-r-normal--13-----*-iso8859-1
smallFixedWidthFont: --clean-medium-r-normal--12-------*
*basicBackground: #4f4f4f
Maya*Background: #4f4f4f
*textForeground: #000000
*textFieldBackground: #d3b5b5
*readOnlyBackground: #bdbdbd
*buttonBackground: #bdbdbd
...
It all looks logical to me (what comes from the help files), but it doesn't work (I've already changed the hex values to red, in case it was using the current colours anyway; I've moved the file in my local path from ~/maya/ to ~/maya/app-defaults etc.
Using MayaScheme doesn't work in all desktop environments, I've tested, so it can't be an issue with KDE only.
I will monitor this thread and contribute back when I resolve that quirk 
