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How to install new themes
There are 4 different themes you can adjust in Xfce: the window decorations, the GTK+ interfaces, the cursors, and the icons. You can find themes on various website, there are a couple of them:
- deviantARTs: XFCE-section
- Customize.orgs: XFCE-section
- Xfce-Look: Everything, but mixed with other desktop environments
- XFCE-Forums: mostly window manager themes
- deviantARTs: (GNOME) GTK2-section
- Gnome Art: GTK-themes for the GNOME desktop environments
Wallpapers websites with good quality and resolutions:
Window decorations
- Extract the theme in
~/.themes
- System wide installation in
${sysprefix}/share/themes
- Make sure the directory layout looks like this:
~/.themes/<theme_name>/xfwm4/
- If the theme contains scalable images (
~/.themes/<theme_name>/xfwm4/*.svg
) it's better to install the librsvg package - Select the theme in the Window Manager Settings
You can find more information about how to create a window manager theme here.
GTK+ interfaces
A GTK+ theme is the theme of the toolkit (buttons, textfields, etc). Most of the GTK+ themes need their own theme engine, make sure you have that theme engine installed with the same prefix as the GTK+ toolkit. To install and use a theme, follow these steps:
- Extract the theme in
~/.themes
- System wide installation in
${sysprefix}/share/themes
- Make sure the theme contains the following file:
~/.themes/<theme_name>/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
- Select the theme in the User Interface Settings
Cursors (4.4 only)
- Extract the theme in
~/.icons
- System wide installation in
${sysprefix}/share/icons
- Make sure the directory layout looks like this:
./icons/<theme_name>/cursors
- Select the theme in the Mouse Settings. If there is no tab with cursor themes, make sure xfce-mcs-plugins is compiled with Xcursor support
Icons
- Extract the theme in
~/.icons
- System wide installation in
${sysprefix}/share/icons
- Optional: run
gtk-update-icon-cache -f -t ~/.icons/<theme_name>
to create an icon cache 1) - If the theme contains scalable icons (
~/.icons/<theme_name>/scalable
) make sure you have librsvg installed - Select the theme in the User Interface Settings (2nd tab)
When you have icon theme problems, it's also recommended to install the hicolor-icon-theme
package.