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I'll be honest my experiences with themes for Linux have been quite poor. Even with good ones it works for some apps but not others and you end up spending all

I'll be honest my experiences with themes for Linux have been quite poor. Even with good ones it works for some apps but not others and you end up spending all your time fixing edge cases or just dealing with some windows not looking right. My solution has been to just use the default Ubuntu theme that ships with Gnome. I find that theme just seems to work the best across most of my apps with a few small exceptions, compare this to other themes I've tried where only like half of the windows look right. I'm sure there are better themes out there and I could achieve perfect consistency if I dug deep enough and tweaked enough things. But at least in my case I already spend many hours on my computer coding and something like desktop theming is super low on my list, it's one of those things I just need to work because I don't have time to be focusing on that crap. The same goes for my desktop environment. I am well aware that Gnome is not the best and if I put it enough effort I could have a dream setup with XFCE or one of the many tiling window managers. But for me it just goes back to not having time, the thing I love about Gnome is that even though it may be more of a resource hog, it just f*king works.

andrepd 2y ago
I've used Mint-X/Y (the default theme for Linux Mint on Cinnamon) for over a decade now, and my experience has always been great.
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  Mint doesn’t enable snaps by default either, which makes it the superior choice over Ubuntu anyways.
Fnoord 2y ago
If you want Ubuntu theme but with different accent color, there is Yaru [1]. [1] https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru
kristopolous 2y ago
personally I don't get it. If I wanted a macbook, I'd get a macbook. These things are cute and fun, ok, but do people actually want to use it?
- joshuamt15 2y ago
  I just like how the cursor looks. I'd never buy a mac but I can admit the icons and design look nice.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    there's cursor themes on linux and although you have to apply them in the usual wonky linux way, it's totally possible and it is independent of the window manager. Of course some applications do their own cursor management so if you do it poorly your cursor hops around themes as you drag it over various windows based on the toolkit they use but then again, that's what we all signed up for.
  - pndy 2y ago
    Maybe Posy cursor would be a good substitute for you: https://michieldb.nl/other/cursors/ https://michieldb.nl/other/cursors/
    - pantalaimon 2y ago
      Does it also get bigger when you wiggle it?
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  Desktop environments are inherently very personal things and so what one person might find great, someone else might consider unusable. Themes are a good way to add room for user preference without forcing the user to change desktop environments entirely. For example, before libadwaita screwed it all up I used to like to apply a custom theme to GNOME to cut down on the egregious padding everywhere, making the UI a much better fit for non-touch desktop OS use on a small laptop screen. There were several themes that accomplished that very well.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I think it made substantially more sense in the 1990s. For one, Gtk+ used to be advertised as a multi platform toolkit, with a port of GDK to Win32. Making Gtk+ widgets look like Win32 made sense for that. Secondly, there were two groups of people using Linux and X11 in that era: one group who were exiles from commercial Unix, and another, faster growing group coming from Windows. For the former group, it was reasonable to want widgets to look more like Motif or Athena. The latter group wanted a more modern look, which could depart from old school Unix workstations.
adityamwagh 2y ago
Have you tried the Pop_OS theme? I think it looks good.
- dtkav 2y ago
  Pop!_OS also has a built-in tiling window feature called "Automatic Window Tiling." It's integrated into the default desktop environment rather than being a separate tiling window manager like dwm. Nice to have something like dwm but without any fiddling.
imp0cat 2y ago
Yeah, the default Ubuntu theme is great. And if you ever happen to feel adventurous, various Gnome extensions such as Burn My Windows can give you more than enough eye candy while still keeping the stock theme. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/
mitchell209 2y ago
Even if a theme is perfect, it eventually stops getting updated with new versions of whatever you're using so you have to give it up eventually.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I’ve not actually built any themes so take these thoughts with a grain of salt, but my impression is that with GTK at least, most of the problems come down to CSS conflicts and libadwaita doing its own thing separate from GTK proper. It seems like a lot of GTK apps hardcode colors, fonts, etc instead of parameterizing too, which means they aren’t going to respond to theme changes correctly. All together these combine to produce a pretty spotty theming experience. Things seem a bit better on the Qt side of things, but it suffers resolution scaling issues. Most KDE/Qt themes I’ve tried can’t draw correctly at non-integer scales. Personally I think that CSS is actually pretty badly suited for the use case of desktop UI toolkit theming. It’s fine for one-off apps but quickly becomes a mess when it needs to be part of a larger more flexible system.
- TingPing 2y ago
  Its just an impossible problem. Apps like to make very custom interfaces. All of CSS is great. Platforms like consistency, so they maintain their own complex CSS. Users like to customize everything, so CSS is powerful but will always break as its fighting the others.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    More than apps liking to make custom interfaces, I think it’s more that companies like to try to make their UI into a brand, necessitating a high level of customization. If you look at the majority of FOSS software, even much of it that’s held in better regard by users (e.g. Krita), highly custom UI is considerably more unusual. There’s not much that can be done about UI-as-branding unfortunately, but for everything else I believe that parameterization is the answer. Don’t hardcode colors, fonts, etc and instead favor framework-provided presets (like UIColor.systemBackground and UIFont.caption1 on iOS) wherever practical and that’ll for the most part make your app remain usable regardless of how the user’s themed their system, short of just using a badly made theme. This should be done anyway because it’s a huge boon to accessibility if the user can e.g. enable colorblind mode and have the reds and greens in apps adjust automatically because their devs were thoughtful enough to use Color.systemGreen and Color.systemRed instead of hardcoding #FF0000 and #008000.
pooriamokhtari 2y ago
> it just f*king works. I think this is the first time I've heard anyone say this about the Linux desktop experience! Kudos to the GNOME/UBUNTU people I guess.
datadeft 2y ago
Vertical integration is what is missing for a long time. I was trying to use Linux and FreeBSD previously and it is just a great time sink. Anyways, at least I learned a lot about Linux and it helped me got a job as a systems engineer years later.
jeswin 2y ago
Fully agree, if you prefer Ubuntu. Use defaults, switch LTS to LTS. This theme has many subtle issues as well - the top padding of "vince" in the third window, the width of types etc.
kombine 2y ago
Same goes for Breeze, default theme for KDE Plasma. I've tried a few themes and customisations for UI elements but always came back to the default because of some corner cases.
Discordian93 2y ago
They used to work better in the 00s/early 10s before API changes to Linux desktop environments. It's why most Linux theming sites seem to be stuck in that era.
GoblinSlayer 2y ago
Every version of gtk has its own skin engine, and there being gtk 2,3,4,5, you need 4 different skins for all of them.
- zekica 2y ago
  QT is sightly better, but not much: you have QtStyle, QtQuick styles, and separate Plasma styles.
wvh 2y ago
Still looking back with nostalgia to the themes.org heyday of creativity... There are a lot creative people, but making a theme work for all programs and people in all situations and edge cases likely requires a gigantic effort that seems best tackled by a corporate team with paid people giving one or two variants persistent attention and a pile of bug reports and fixing. You simply can't maintain a bunch of code or design that you are not using yourself daily, with problems you don't experience and can't reproduce. Maybe, very maybe, it can be done by somebody with an extreme level of dedication: https://www.nordtheme.com/ports https://www.nordtheme.com/ports I wasted an insane amount doing desktop customisation in the late 90's and early 2000's, time I haven't had for a long time. Luckily most default themes are pretty decent these days and sufficiently neutral to work for most situations.

andrepd 2y ago

I've used Mint-X/Y (the default theme for Linux Mint on Cinnamon) for over a decade now, and my experience has always been great.

__turbobrew__ 2y ago
Mint doesn’t enable snaps by default either, which makes it the superior choice over Ubuntu anyways.

Fnoord 2y ago

If you want Ubuntu theme but with different accent color, there is Yaru [1]. [1] https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru

kristopolous 2y ago

personally I don't get it. If I wanted a macbook, I'd get a macbook. These things are cute and fun, ok, but do people actually want to use it?

joshuamt15 2y ago
I just like how the cursor looks. I'd never buy a mac but I can admit the icons and design look nice.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  there's cursor themes on linux and although you have to apply them in the usual wonky linux way, it's totally possible and it is independent of the window manager. Of course some applications do their own cursor management so if you do it poorly your cursor hops around themes as you drag it over various windows based on the toolkit they use but then again, that's what we all signed up for.
- pndy 2y ago
  Maybe Posy cursor would be a good substitute for you: https://michieldb.nl/other/cursors/ https://michieldb.nl/other/cursors/
  - pantalaimon 2y ago
    Does it also get bigger when you wiggle it?
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
Desktop environments are inherently very personal things and so what one person might find great, someone else might consider unusable. Themes are a good way to add room for user preference without forcing the user to change desktop environments entirely. For example, before libadwaita screwed it all up I used to like to apply a custom theme to GNOME to cut down on the egregious padding everywhere, making the UI a much better fit for non-touch desktop OS use on a small laptop screen. There were several themes that accomplished that very well.
asveikau 2y ago
I think it made substantially more sense in the 1990s. For one, Gtk+ used to be advertised as a multi platform toolkit, with a port of GDK to Win32. Making Gtk+ widgets look like Win32 made sense for that. Secondly, there were two groups of people using Linux and X11 in that era: one group who were exiles from commercial Unix, and another, faster growing group coming from Windows. For the former group, it was reasonable to want widgets to look more like Motif or Athena. The latter group wanted a more modern look, which could depart from old school Unix workstations.

adityamwagh 2y ago

Have you tried the Pop_OS theme? I think it looks good.

dtkav 2y ago
Pop!_OS also has a built-in tiling window feature called "Automatic Window Tiling." It's integrated into the default desktop environment rather than being a separate tiling window manager like dwm. Nice to have something like dwm but without any fiddling.

imp0cat 2y ago

Yeah, the default Ubuntu theme is great. And if you ever happen to feel adventurous, various Gnome extensions such as Burn My Windows can give you more than enough eye candy while still keeping the stock theme. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/

mitchell209 2y ago

Even if a theme is perfect, it eventually stops getting updated with new versions of whatever you're using so you have to give it up eventually.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago

I’ve not actually built any themes so take these thoughts with a grain of salt, but my impression is that with GTK at least, most of the problems come down to CSS conflicts and libadwaita doing its own thing separate from GTK proper. It seems like a lot of GTK apps hardcode colors, fonts, etc instead of parameterizing too, which means they aren’t going to respond to theme changes correctly. All together these combine to produce a pretty spotty theming experience. Things seem a bit better on the Qt side of things, but it suffers resolution scaling issues. Most KDE/Qt themes I’ve tried can’t draw correctly at non-integer scales. Personally I think that CSS is actually pretty badly suited for the use case of desktop UI toolkit theming. It’s fine for one-off apps but quickly becomes a mess when it needs to be part of a larger more flexible system.

TingPing 2y ago
Its just an impossible problem. Apps like to make very custom interfaces. All of CSS is great. Platforms like consistency, so they maintain their own complex CSS. Users like to customize everything, so CSS is powerful but will always break as its fighting the others.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  More than apps liking to make custom interfaces, I think it’s more that companies like to try to make their UI into a brand, necessitating a high level of customization. If you look at the majority of FOSS software, even much of it that’s held in better regard by users (e.g. Krita), highly custom UI is considerably more unusual. There’s not much that can be done about UI-as-branding unfortunately, but for everything else I believe that parameterization is the answer. Don’t hardcode colors, fonts, etc and instead favor framework-provided presets (like UIColor.systemBackground and UIFont.caption1 on iOS) wherever practical and that’ll for the most part make your app remain usable regardless of how the user’s themed their system, short of just using a badly made theme. This should be done anyway because it’s a huge boon to accessibility if the user can e.g. enable colorblind mode and have the reds and greens in apps adjust automatically because their devs were thoughtful enough to use Color.systemGreen and Color.systemRed instead of hardcoding #FF0000 and #008000.

pooriamokhtari 2y ago

> it just f*king works. I think this is the first time I've heard anyone say this about the Linux desktop experience! Kudos to the GNOME/UBUNTU people I guess.

datadeft 2y ago

Vertical integration is what is missing for a long time. I was trying to use Linux and FreeBSD previously and it is just a great time sink. Anyways, at least I learned a lot about Linux and it helped me got a job as a systems engineer years later.

jeswin 2y ago

Fully agree, if you prefer Ubuntu. Use defaults, switch LTS to LTS. This theme has many subtle issues as well - the top padding of "vince" in the third window, the width of types etc.

kombine 2y ago

Same goes for Breeze, default theme for KDE Plasma. I've tried a few themes and customisations for UI elements but always came back to the default because of some corner cases.

Discordian93 2y ago

They used to work better in the 00s/early 10s before API changes to Linux desktop environments. It's why most Linux theming sites seem to be stuck in that era.

GoblinSlayer 2y ago

Every version of gtk has its own skin engine, and there being gtk 2,3,4,5, you need 4 different skins for all of them.

zekica 2y ago
QT is sightly better, but not much: you have QtStyle, QtQuick styles, and separate Plasma styles.

wvh 2y ago

Still looking back with nostalgia to the themes.org heyday of creativity... There are a lot creative people, but making a theme work for all programs and people in all situations and edge cases likely requires a gigantic effort that seems best tackled by a corporate team with paid people giving one or two variants persistent attention and a pile of bug reports and fixing. You simply can't maintain a bunch of code or design that you are not using yourself daily, with problems you don't experience and can't reproduce. Maybe, very maybe, it can be done by somebody with an extreme level of dedication: https://www.nordtheme.com/ports https://www.nordtheme.com/ports I wasted an insane amount doing desktop customisation in the late 90's and early 2000's, time I haven't had for a long time. Luckily most default themes are pretty decent these days and sufficiently neutral to work for most situations.