Thoughts on this Reddit post about XFCE ... ?

Omnimaxus · 2026-10-18 16:04:30

Hi to everyone. Saw this on Reddit. Your thoughts? Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/xfce/comments/ … hame_were/

Last edited by Omnimaxus (2026-10-18 16:04:45)

JmaCWQ · 2026-10-19 06:37:24

Not understanding much about this sort of thing, from a user perspective it irritates me that every time there's a major upgrade or whatever it's called to Xfce, GTK, etc., it often breaks my favourite theme, icon pack and occasionally other things, which takes quite a lot of time to figure out what they've changed and broken and to 'fix' it so it works again.
And sometimes it can't be fixed.

If it gets to the stage that the majority of Xfce apps can no longer be custom themed because of this libadwaita, or whatever else they decide to do that prevents me from using Xfce mostly how I choose to, I guess it'll be time to move on to another desktop environment.
I hope it doesn't get to that stage though as I quite like it.

The distro developers will hopefully be able to create workarounds or fixes to correct whatever issues are created, similar to what has been done on some distros with the Client Side Decoration implementation.

Omnimaxus · 2026-10-19 16:04:07

JmaCWQ wrote:

Not understanding much about this sort of thing, from a user perspective it irritates me that every time there's a major upgrade or whatever it's called to Xfce, GTK, etc., it often breaks my favourite theme, icon pack and occasionally other things, which takes quite a lot of time to figure out what they've changed and broken and to 'fix' it so it works again.
And sometimes it can't be fixed.
If it gets to the stage that the majority of Xfce apps can no longer be custom themed because of this libadwaita, or whatever else they decide to do that prevents me from using Xfce mostly how I choose to, I guess it'll be time to move on to another desktop environment.
I hope it doesn't get to that stage though as I quite like it.
The distro developers will hopefully be able to create workarounds or fixes to correct whatever issues are created, similar to what has been done on some distros with the Client Side Decoration implementation.

Hopefully you're right. Thanks for commenting.

juribel · 2026-10-19 16:39:15

JmaCWQ wrote:

If it gets to the stage that the majority of Xfce apps can no longer be custom themed because of this libadwaita, or whatever else they decide to do that prevents me from using Xfce mostly how I choose to, I guess it'll be time to move on to another desktop environment.
I hope it doesn't get to that stage though as I quite like it.

There won't be many choices left to change to if tainting and destroying the Linux desktop with Gnome, libadwaita, CSD and missing title and menu bars goes on like it does. At least every DE based on GTK will then be based on the same mess. I am wondering what the intention is and where it is going to.

If someone has never seen a computer with a usable DE but only had smartphones and tablets to work with, this may be OK for him. But for computer users who love their freedom, this is simply unbearable.

CwF · 2026-10-19 17:50:07

I've started to digest this, and I think it's a matter of "change is bad" so we don't think it through.

In a poorly named post "Themes suck" I am building up a how-to.
https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=168374

Futher explanations;
As an alternative to using an existing theme to hack up, we can start with a default Adwaita template
/*gresource extract /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0 /org/gtk/libgtk/theme/Adwaita/gtk-contained-dark.css*/
Since that may overrun the terminal, I made some files > ~/Downloads/contained-dark.css
From there we can either modify these files to our liking. This seems a good, and long method.

As far as i can tell, everything can still be themed, but there are changes coming.

JmaCWQ · 2026-10-20 05:26:34

juribel wrote:

There won't be many choices left to change to if tainting and destroying the Linux desktop with Gnome, libadwaita, CSD and missing title and menu bars goes on like it does. At least every DE based on GTK will then be based on the same mess. I am wondering what the intention is and where it is going to.
If someone has never seen a computer with a usable DE but only had smartphones and tablets to work with, this may be OK for him. But for computer users who love their freedom, this is simply unbearable.

I imagine it's quite a complicated issue, but it'd be nice to see some 'understandable by users' explanations of why things we're used to and like have to keep being 'broken'.
While the coding benefits I imagine are probably worthwhile from a developer point of view, from a user perspective it is somewhat disappointing and often quite irritating.

Quite possibly a lot of the information is already out there if one knows where to look and more importantly, understands it.
The rest of us just get cranky when our favourite things break after upgrades and we have to spend hours or sometimes much longer trying to figure out what's needed to 'fix' it lol

Better backward compatibility would possibly solve a lot of the complaints about changes and associated issues, but as users we have to either use what we get, learn how to 'fix' it ourselves, or move on.
I liked the Gnome desktop when using Ubuntu 10.04 I think it was many years ago, then along came 12.04 or whatever it was with the Unity interface, that basically broke everything I was used to and I haven't used a Gnome desktop environment since.

As Xfce is reliant on GTK I guess we've not seen the last of breakages with upgrades big_smile

gogogadget · 2026-10-20 13:33:10

JmaCWQ wrote:

I imagine it's quite a complicated issue, but it'd be nice to see some 'understandable by users' explanations of why things we're used to and like have to keep being 'broken'.

From what I read many years ago, GTK devs don't care about GTK themes devs, if a new version of GTK3 break themes, it's not their problem. That's why some themes didn't get updated, because it was too much work.

I think it's fine as long as you use popular themes with good support, and I use gt3-classic, a modified GTK3 with no CSD for a more coherent look.

https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic/wiki/Screenshots

juribel · 2026-10-20 13:44:41

On Debian, nocsd still doesn't seem to work with Gtk4 applications. CSD is ugly, and I avoid such applications whenever possible.

Clio · 2026-10-20 17:41:38

@juribel
The forky and sid repositories contain the libgtk-nocsd package, which now also supports GTK4. It can be installed without any problems.
The source code is also available on Codeberg:
https://codeberg.org/MorsMortium/GTK4-N … ranch/main

gogogadget · 2026-10-20 17:46:38

juribel wrote:

On Debian, nocsd still doesn't seem to work with Gtk4 applications. CSD is ugly, and I avoid such applications whenever possible.

Among my GTK4 apps, Pavucontrol, Gnote, Handbrake and SimpleScan, only the latter keep a CSD titlebar, the others look good.

JmaCWQ · 2026-10-21 02:23:18

gogogadget wrote:

From what I read many years ago, GTK devs don't care about GTK themes devs, if a new version of GTK3 break themes, it's not their problem. That's why some themes didn't get updated, because it was too much work.
I think it's fine as long as you use popular themes with good support, and I use gt3-classic, a modified GTK3 with no CSD for a more coherent look.
https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic/wiki/Screenshots

I have considered modding one of the more up to date themes to suit how I like things, and imagine it's doable, though most likely very time consuming.
If I was somehow successful at getting everything how I prefer, the next GTK upgrade would probably only break things again anyway.

I did a while ago try to fix some of the many Gtk-WARNING's appearing in .xsession-errors & Terminal at times with my preferred theme, but found every time I 'fixed' something so that error no longer appeared, it was replaced with another similar error of something else, things like 'Expected semicolon', 'expected '}' after declarations', 'Expected a valid selector' etc. etc., and after a full week of that I gave up and now just ignore the complaints big_smile

Anyone know of a GUI app that allows modding theme elements without having to go through the many lines in a theme's multiple .css files and images to find different things and make changes to them?

Can't seem to get Oomox/Themix working on MX-Linux, too old I think, lots of unmet dependencies and possibly other issues, and I did read somewhere it's probably not compatible with the current GTK version anyway.

MX has a GUI tool called MX Theme colours, though it only changes the highlight colour of MX themes mx-matcha & mx-ease.
I asked about it a while ago and there were no plans to get it usable for an entire theme unfortunately.

CwF · 2026-10-21 03:05:07

If you like teal greens I'll have one up soon.
The tools are mousepad and a terminal with lots of standard expression multi-step grepping, fun.

Now that I'm most of the way through it, exporting the default Adwaita theme into an editable file and starting from there has paid big dividends. I'm glad I choose the long way.

Many things are fixed as far as off the shelf themes go. There are zero errors. My original overrides I used are mostly gone since there are in the base theme. I'm down to a few details after tackling a few details at a time. I do expect to do it once!

As far as gui's go, the old way of @define-color is going away as I understand it and the base theme needs to be written with those variables as the colors - which the default extraction is not. I have however indexed the default colors for easy swaps according to original groupings.

I'll put it up soon if people are interested. At the moment it could be a 1.6MB zip.

JmaCWQ · 2026-10-21 05:52:33

Yeah I'd like to have a look at it once you're happy with it, thanks.
Multi-step grepping has already lost me lol
I did read your thread on the Debian forum the other day though not sure how much of it sunk in. not much I'd say big_smile

Guessing here again, but I think a lot of the error issues with my preferred theme is it's just too old and incompatible, though most of it seems to display and work ok, just with the constant errors shown.
It uses a lot of .png images for things like the prelight, menubar, buttons, progress bars, toolbars, troughs etc. etc. that I modified to suit my tastes.
I do prefer that look compared to just straight colours like nearly all of the newer themes I've tried seem to have for those things.
I think last time I messed with a newer theme there was a lot of .svg's and other things that seemed to be a lot more complicated and harder to figure out what did what.

juribel · 2026-10-21 09:06:10

Unfortunately, I can't remember which was the first theme I used for my own theming. Maybe it was the "Millenium" theme. Not that I like the Windows 2000 design, but the theme is written in SCSS, modular and well-documented. It compiles with the sassc compiler and produces a clean CSS file named gtk-contained.css. As far I can see from the README file, it is based on Adwaita.

With SCSS and using modules, it is quite easy to modify this theme to your own needs. I produced a variety of themes from this, mainly changing the colors and the appearance of some widgets. Anyway, your first theme will take quite a while.

Last edited by juribel (2026-10-21 09:07:18)

gogogadget · 2026-10-21 14:50:42

JmaCWQ wrote:

I have considered modding one of the more up to date themes to suit how I like things, and imagine it's doable, though most likely very time consuming.

Apart changing few colors, I don't touch it, I have my own window theme, because editing some xpm files is easier, but I have a few things in $HOME/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css like hiding the dashed lines, the rounded corners on the panels and others.

JmaCWQ · 2026-10-21 16:56:17

Yeah I modded a Window Manager theme for my own use too, it never seems to get broken with upgrades, touch wood, which is nice.
Yep some ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css stuff here also, which so far has survived a couple of upgrades.

......Anyway, your first theme will take quite a while.

More than likely big_smile
Took me ages just to mod the theme I use now, and that was years ago when things were a lot simpler.
Every time it breaks it seems to take longer to find what's required to unbreak it.

CwF · 2026-10-21 17:41:10

Yes, for me the project will be Fall '26, a whole season...

I didn't want to back up all the way to compiling a replacement contained.css, but use the default template with a structure of mods that make it easy for my brain to understand it next year, after I've forget...

I have included /assets and /xfwm4 directories that match, but am not so familiar with the contents or methods of modification. So far my only imagined request will be to scale them up some for hdpi and/or xhdpi. The colors are already correct.

Can I simply scale the entire contents with ‘convert’ ?

And can only one scale exist within the theme?
Any other choices of scale need to be external to the theme and selected separately?
I think so...

juribel · 2026-10-21 20:00:40

When I tried to scale the xpm files with convert, they lost their transparency which can be quite ugly. Symbolic names inside the xpm files get lost when using convert, and I had to correct this manually.

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#1 2026-10-18 16:04:30

Thoughts on this Reddit post about XFCE ... ?

#2 2026-10-19 06:37:24

Re: Thoughts on this Reddit post about XFCE ... ?

#3 2026-10-19 16:04:07

Re: Thoughts on this Reddit post about XFCE ... ?

#4 2026-10-19 16:39:15

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#5 2026-10-19 17:50:07

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#6 2026-10-20 05:26:34

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#7 2026-10-20 13:33:10

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#8 2026-10-20 13:44:41

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#9 2026-10-20 17:41:38

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#10 2026-10-20 17:46:38

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#11 2026-10-21 02:23:18

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#12 2026-10-21 03:05:07

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#13 2026-10-21 05:52:33

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#14 2026-10-21 09:06:10

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#15 2026-10-21 14:50:42

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#16 2026-10-21 16:56:17

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#17 2026-10-21 17:41:10

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#18 2026-10-21 20:00:40

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