KDE: text on minimized windows in taskbar give me a headachie

The minimized windows have a greyish colour that is hard to read against the grey background on the taskbar, can't I change it somehow? :(

You tried gnome instead? There may be a theme for KDE that uses slightly different colors but has a similar overall appearance. (Gnome has many themes that are similar.)

I didn't like gnome compared to KDE, but there is only this one thing that irritates me. I temporarly made the background white on my panels as grey on white is a slight (but far from satisfactory) improvement from grey on grey, using the tint function on transparent panels - gah, you can customize a lot but not just the annoying parts. Where do I get these themes?

You can find KDE themes under the themes section at kde-look.org. Gnome themes are available at gnome-look.org.

Hmm.. I installed kdmtheme using adept manager but it does not show up in system settings. Isn't there any way to change the colour of the text more directly?

Have you tried here?