gnome theming is destroying my life
I probably updated my Ubuntu 12.04 install too enthusiastically, and suddenly I have a lot of horrible theming. In particular, menu bars are now a horrible grey colour, and my hand cursor is black with a white outline. Thunderbird has been particularly badly affected: there the menu bar has a dark grey background and black for the text colour. My gnome-relevant set up is `/usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop` [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=XMonad Comment=Lightweight tiling window manager Exec=gnome-session --session=xmonad Icon=xmonad.png Type=XSession `/usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/xmonad.session` [GNOME Session] Name=Xmonad session RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;gnome-panel; RequiredProviders=windowmanager;notifications; DefaultProvider-windowmanager=xmonad DefaultProvider-notifications=notification-daemon Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings. There's an Applications / System Tools / System Settings menu entry that hangs off the gnome-panel, and this allows the selection of themes from the Display option, but this doesn't seem to have any effect on what I see. I realise that this is more a Gnome question than an xmonad one, but my situation is more likely to be one that xmonad users understand and/or have encountered. I'd like to keep the gnome "seasoning" around if possible, but the way it looks at the moment is sooo ugly. Any advice gratefully received, Michael
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish < michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote:
Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without. Michael
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote:
Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without.
GNOME 3.x theming is still evolving and therefore you most probably have a theme which doesn't work correctly with the installed GNOME libraries. You can set a theme in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. Try a default theme or one from gnome-look.org which supports your 3.2 or 3.4 GNOME version.
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:41 AM, Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote: Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without.
GNOME 3.x theming is still evolving and therefore you most
I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e. "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly, possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the Glorious New Shiny. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, On 13.09.2012 17:15, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:41 AM, Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote: Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without.
GNOME 3.x theming is still evolving and therefore you most
I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e. "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly, possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the Glorious New Shiny.
I'd like to throw a bit in here. I'm running completely without {gnome,xfce}-session-manager (which does normally all the fancy gtk theme settings). It is possible to configure gtk-{2,3} applications without GNOME or XFCE though. For reference I've attached my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files. Themes can most likely be found in /usr/share/themes (depends on installation) whereas icon themes normally reside in /usr/share/icons (again, dependent on installation). The reference for configuring gtk with plain files are http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/stable/GtkSettings.html http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkSettings.html Please note that the format slightly differs, especially for strings. It is also noteworthy, that the include for a theme in gtkrc-2.0 has to be upfront. Hope this was helpful and best regards, Jochen -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlBSCDIACgkQtVwvsA+W4CA3vACcDEWA2mz8fBuE1f/6wqnLHMYA rmMAn18bC+ywEqnJiOHPdqCazDMbFB23 =12+/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Jochen Keil <jochen.keil@gmail.com> wrote:
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Hi,
On 13.09.2012 17:15, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:41 AM, Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote: Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without.
GNOME 3.x theming is still evolving and therefore you most
I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e. "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly, possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the Glorious New Shiny.
I'd like to throw a bit in here. I'm running completely without {gnome,xfce}-session-manager (which does normally all the fancy gtk theme settings). It is possible to configure gtk-{2,3} applications without GNOME or XFCE though.
For reference I've attached my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files.
Themes can most likely be found in /usr/share/themes (depends on installation) whereas icon themes normally reside in /usr/share/icons (again, dependent on installation).
Plus ~/.themes and ~/.icons.
The reference for configuring gtk with plain files are http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/stable/GtkSettings.html http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkSettings.html Please note that the format slightly differs, especially for strings. It is also noteworthy, that the include for a theme in gtkrc-2.0 has to be upfront.
Hope this was helpful and best regards,
Jochen -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux)
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On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 6:30 PM, Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Jochen Keil <jochen.keil@gmail.com> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi,
On 13.09.2012 17:15, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:41 AM, Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:27 AM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au> wrote:
On 13/09/12 10:52, Brandon Allbery wrote:
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Michael Norrish <michael.norrish@nicta.com.au <mailto:michael.norrish@nicta.com.au>> wrote: Until a few days ago, this was giving me a very pleasant xmonad experience with a little gnome seasoning. But, it also seems as if I can't adjust my gnome settings.
This happened to me when I migrated my Debian stable to testing (which ran GNOME 3); I never did find a way to make it behave, and finally gave up and wiped the install.
Thanks for the (depressing) news. I will have to look into what I can do without.
GNOME 3.x theming is still evolving and therefore you most
I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e. "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly, possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the Glorious New Shiny.
I'd like to throw a bit in here. I'm running completely without {gnome,xfce}-session-manager (which does normally all the fancy gtk theme settings). It is possible to configure gtk-{2,3} applications without GNOME or XFCE though.
For reference I've attached my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files.
Themes can most likely be found in /usr/share/themes (depends on installation) whereas icon themes normally reside in /usr/share/icons (again, dependent on installation).
Plus ~/.themes and ~/.icons.
~/.gtkrc-2.0 is also sourced. For ease of use there are several gtk2 and gtk3 theme selector/configurators: gtk-chtheme, lxappearance, and a tools called widget factory which I don't remember the package or exact project name of.
The reference for configuring gtk with plain files are http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/stable/GtkSettings.html http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkSettings.html Please note that the format slightly differs, especially for strings. It is also noteworthy, that the include for a theme in gtkrc-2.0 has to be upfront.
Hope this was helpful and best regards,
Jochen -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux)
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On 14/09/12 02:22, Jochen Keil wrote:
I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e. "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly, possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the Glorious New Shiny.
I'd like to throw a bit in here. I'm running completely without {gnome,xfce}-session-manager (which does normally all the fancy gtk theme settings). It is possible to configure gtk-{2,3} applications without GNOME or XFCE though.
For reference I've attached my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files.
Themes can most likely be found in /usr/share/themes (depends on installation) whereas icon themes normally reside in /usr/share/icons (again, dependent on installation).
Dear Jochen, My desktop settings call for a gnome-settings-daemon to be run, and indeed, ps reveals that one is running. I can also configure some things from the System Tools/System Settings/ menu. For example, turning on sticky modifiers in the Universal Access/Typing screen works. But changing the theme in Appearance doesn't seem to do anything at all. Nor can I seem to change the system font anywhere. I don't have either a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 or ~/.config/gtk-3.0 directory. How do I tell which framework my applications are basing themselves on? Of the files you attached, should I just create instances of all of them? Thanks for any advice you may have, Michael
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Hello Michael,
On 14.09.2012 08:18, Michael Norrish wrote:
> On 14/09/12 02:22, Jochen Keil wrote:
>
>>> I should clarify: this was GNOME 3 running in fallback (i.e.
>>> "should be" GNOME 2). But somehow all theming was disabled and
>>> (it being that I had a theme engine configured, and it was
>>> present in the system and if I installed a theme manager I
>>> could deselect/reselect it) theme engines threw errors as if
>>> they couldn't be found. Or, integrating the above, that
>>> something is forcing the theme to something stupid and ugly,
>>> possibly in a misguided attempt to get people to throw
>>> everything (possibly including hardware) out and upgrade to the
>>> Glorious New Shiny.
>
>> I'd like to throw a bit in here. I'm running completely without
>> {gnome,xfce}-session-manager (which does normally all the fancy
>> gtk theme settings). It is possible to configure gtk-{2,3}
>> applications without GNOME or XFCE though.
>
>> For reference I've attached my ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and
>> ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files.
>
>> Themes can most likely be found in /usr/share/themes (depends on
>> installation) whereas icon themes normally reside in
>> /usr/share/icons (again, dependent on installation).
>
> Dear Jochen,
>
> My desktop settings call for a gnome-settings-daemon to be run,
> and indeed, ps reveals that one is running. I can also configure
> some things from the System Tools/System Settings/ menu. For
> example, turning on sticky modifiers in the Universal Access/Typing
> screen works. But changing the theme in Appearance doesn't seem to
> do anything at all. Nor can I seem to change the system font
> anywhere.
You can combine manual configuration and a settings daemon. However,
in my experience you are asking for trouble. :)
> I don't have either a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 or ~/.config/gtk-3.0
> directory.
~/.gtkrc-2.0 is a file, like the (previously) attached one.
~/.config/gtk-3.0 is a directory, which you can create using "mkdir
- -p". You should, however, check if ~/.config is your $XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
After that you can place your settings.ini (for configuring gtk-3.0
based apps) there.
> How do I tell which framework my applications are basing themselves
> on?
The methods I can think of are:
* Use ldd `which my-application`
* Check the dependencies with you packet manager
* Judge by the looks.. (meaning you know about the subtle differences
between gtk-2 and gtk-3. :)
> Of the files you attached, should I just create instances of all of
> them?
Depends on what you want/need. .gtkrc-2.0 is for gtk2 and settings.ini
for gtk3.
In addition, Carsten mentioned some graphical helper programs in his
last email. Personally, I prefer the textual method, since I don't
find the documentation I've linked to in my last mail very hard to
understand.
> Thanks for any advice you may have,
My pleasure,
Jochen
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participants (4)
-
Brandon Allbery -
Carsten Mattner -
Jochen Keil -
Michael Norrish