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I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobod

I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobody have the time to maintain good alternative themes in these conditions. XFCE with Chicago95 already exists (and so does Q4OS with XPQ4) as proof of concept that the window manager and toolbar side can be replicated. The problem is that important pieces of software are not relying on any toolkit directly, but implementing their own version, so even if you support qt, gtk2 and gtk3+ applications with 3 different themes, there will be software running under electron or implementing their own client side decorations and breaking all the rules. I think the easiest way to start would be to simply collect and maintain existing themes with a unified look and make a distro based on Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL to avoid breaking changes at maximum. This distro would have pre-selected software that behaves well with the selected themes, and need to have at absolute minimum a working browser with extensions following that theme. If implementing from the bottom up, then something similar to helloSystem could also be a way, but I do not see it working in practice due to the time it would take.

bluGill 3y ago
You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.

bluGill 3y ago

You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable

pseudalopex 3y ago
Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.