Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

SMXuser · 2023-03-22 09:45:07

Hi everyone,
I've been a Linux user since 2009, started out with XFCE, tried Gnome, Unity, and KDE over the years, but always reverted back to XFCE since I like that desktop the best. For the past 3 years that's been my only desktop. After installing XFCE, one of the first things that I've always done was to change the icon theme to OXYGEN icons since I prefer that look over all others. The distro that I use for XFCE is MX Linux.

Anyway, very recently as in the past few weeks I've noticed that when I switch the icons to Oxygen after an installation, for some odd reason the panel symbols for the Volume, Unmount, and Battery no longer switch to the Oxygen icons. Instead I'm left with these horrific looking huge 8bit fat ugly white symbols which look totally out of place and, compared to the other icons, quite ugly.

No problem, so I went to the default icon set under usr/share/icons/Adwaita since Adwaita had the identical looking icons, then painstakingly exported, then imported into Gimp, altered all of the icons in question to look like the Oxygen icons, re-saved everything, moved it all back to Adwaita ... yet nothing changed on the taskbar after a reboot.
I'm really frustrated about the hideous look of those volume, unmount, and battery icons.

Does anyone know precisely where I can find those icons in order for me to change them? They're the icons that appear in the notifications of the panel, same place where the network/wlan icon appears as well.
Thanks for reading and thank you for your patience (long post).

ToZ · 2023-03-22 12:22:59

Hello and welcome.

Most of Xfce's icons have moved to symbolic icons and the oxygen icon theme doesn't seem to include comparable icons in its set. Plus, I believe the icon set is intended for KDE/Plasma, so there isn't much work around making sure it works in other DEs.

For the volume icon, assuming you are using the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin to generate these icons, can be switched to using regular icons by adding the following to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

#pulseaudio-button image {-gtk-icon-style: regular}

...and restarting the panel via "xfce4-panel -r".

For the mount icon, assuming you are using the xfce4-mount-plugin, you can change the icon via the plugin's properties.

For the battery icon, assuming you are using the xfce4-power-manger-plugin, it gets a little more complicated. I'll show you a way to see what the name of the icon is so that can ensure that the oxygen icon set includes it.

First, enable the Gtk Inspector keybinding:

gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.Debug enable-inspector-keybinding true

Right-click on the battery plugin and with the popup menu showing, press Ctrl+Shift+I (capital letter 'eye')
In the inspector dialog that displays, ensure that the "Objects" tab is active, and then click on the icon in the top left corner ("Select an object")
Your cursor should change to a crosshairs, click on the battery icon
Back in the inspector, directly under the top left icon is a drop-down. Select "Properties" from that dropdown.
Search for the "icon-name" property. This is the name of the icon that is being used.
Back in the oxygen theme, link the icon you want to use to this name. For example, "ln -s battery-100.png battery-level-100-charged-symbolic.png"
Note: you will need to make the change to the folder closest but not over the size of the panel. Also, you will need to rebuild the icon cache when done:
```
gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/oxygen
```

SMXuser · 2023-03-22 13:35:34

Wow, what a response, thank you so much. Some of that might have been a little over the top of my head but I'll see if I can get it all figured out in the next few days.

I did find an alternate way to post the audio symbol by using the command volumeicon and automatic start in the sessions settings, but that icon stopped working after some updates or after a reboot (don't remember which). It would be really fantastic if the XFCE developers paid a little bit more attention to looks because it really wouldn't take a lot to use decent looking icons and making such changes permanent. I can supply the images but I can't do what it takes to make better images appear permanently by default.
There's also an alternate battery symbol that can be used, the XFCE4-battery-plugin. That one isn't as attractive as the Oxygen battery symbols but it's much better than the default that I had before. Anyway, I'll work with this and see how it turns out.
Thanks again.

ToZ · 2023-03-22 14:23:45

SMXuser wrote:

It would be really fantastic if the XFCE developers paid a little bit more attention to looks because it really wouldn't take a lot to use decent looking icons and making such changes permanent.

I think Xfce does with respect to at least one default icon theme - Adwaita. It would be unreasonable to expect them to make it work for every icon theme (or more than one) as they don't have access to or a voice with that theme. I would argue that its up to the theme developers to make sure they support Xfce.

That being said, I know you said you like the oxygen icon theme, but it might be worthwhile looking at alternatives. For example, the elementary-icon-theme has good support (mainly because one of the Xfce developers participates on that project as well).

SMXuser · 2023-03-22 15:09:06

Well, I agree partially at least. Certainly there shouldn't need to be a reason to have XFCE be compatible with anything and everything, but in all fairness when the developers choose to adopt a single icon theme such as Adwaita, at that point it really shouldn't be that big of a deal to make sure that all of those particular icons are moderately attractive. It's not like a whole new set of icons would need to be created, but just the few ugly ones revamped. How many can that possible be, a dozen or so?
I'm talking about icons that are just truly ugly and changing them just once ... permanently. smile

Anyway, your idea works for me. I tried the elementary set of icons and I can live with those. Now I'll start experimenting with other icon sets out there to see which one works best for me ... since I have my own highly modified, translated version of MX Linux which I provide to my customers here in Germany who are trying to get away from Windoze.

I think looks are everything in this day and age of android, mac, windows, and ... Linux. I'd say that 99% of people who are not terminal techies or geeks enjoy looking at things that are attractive to use all around, from desktop to menu to panel and to panel extras. The better it looks and user friendly it appears, the more open someone is to making a change and working with it.
That's my take and I'm sticking to it. wink
Have a great day.

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#1 2023-03-22 09:45:07

Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

#2 2023-03-22 12:22:59

Re: Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

#3 2023-03-22 13:35:34

Re: Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

#4 2023-03-22 14:23:45

Re: Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

#5 2023-03-22 15:09:06

Re: Is this an XFCE issue ... Nasty looking Symbols?

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