MX-23 screenshots

[T3KN05H4M4N]

Amazing! @heavy metal What color themes and icons do you use to make it look like that? So freaking cool!

Thank you, it is the Sweet Rainbow or Sweet Dark themes & icons!

Are those available in the stable repos?

[asqwerth]

Amazing! @heavy metal What color themes and icons do you use to make it look like that? So freaking cool!

Thank you, it is the Sweet Rainbow or Sweet Dark themes & icons!

Are those available in the stable repos?

You generally have to download these themes/icons from theme-focused sites like pling.com.

The Sweet Themes and candy-icons (which I replied to you about previously) are by Eliverlara.

https://www.pling.com/u/eliverlara

[ADDED - Eliverlara's Sweet Rainbow provides only the folder icons; for the rest of the matching icons, you have to install candy-icons as well.]

[heavy metal]

Thank you, it is the Sweet Rainbow or Sweet Dark themes & icons!

Are those available in the stable repos?

You generally have to download these themes/icons from theme-focused sites like pling.com.

The Sweet Themes and candy-icons (which I replied to you about previously) are by Eliverlara.

https://www.pling.com/u/eliverlara

[ADDED - Eliverlara's Sweet Rainbow provides only the folder icons; for the rest of the matching icons, you have to install candy-icons as well.]

Yes, you are right, I think I downloaded them from here: https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1305251 (Candy icons) / https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1284047/ (Sweet folders) / https://www.opendesktop.org/s/Gnome/p/1253385/ (Sweet themes)

[dreamer]

Until MX-25 Beta is out I’m playing with Debian Trixie. I drew some inspiration from the skeuomorphic “Liquid Glass” design of macOS 26. I used to “look down” on theming Qt with old gtk2 themes, but it worked better than expected. Both Qt6 and Qt5 (VLC) and of course gtk got a consistent look.

[dreamer]

Playing with LXQt and Kvantum. Kvantum is great since you can modify almost anything through a GUI. The only drawback is that you can’t customize the colors easily.

[AVLinux]

@dreamer

Great stuff! You're starting to sell me on LXQt, love those transparent themes. Since I've always been an XFCE4 and Enlightenment User I know very little about Kvantum but from what I've seen it seems pretty versatile as far as potentially putting together Skeuo or Flat themes.

[asqwerth]

Playing with LXQt and Kvantum. Kvantum is great since you can modify almost anything through a GUI. The only drawback is that you can’t customize the colors easily.

Very nice style, @dreamer ! To be honest, I've never seen LXQt look so good.

@AVLinux the kvantum theme is made of of a text config file and a svg sheet/file for the graphic elements for the widgets. It's fairly easy to edit and adapt existing kvantum themes using these 2 things, and the Kvantum manager comes with many Kvantum themes, some of which are pretty old school skeuo.

I tested adapting KvArc (flat theme) to make a kvantum version of MX's gtk themes, though we probably won't need it.

You can open up one of the old school skeuo themes to see how it's done, then adapt it or make your own.

[ADDED] Looks like this person is still making skeuo kvantum themes that are regularly updated (you have to scroll down to the kvantum section): https://www.pling.com/u/phob1an/

[dreamer]

@AVLinux
@asqwerth

Thanks, I look at LXQt as a slightly less feature-rich version of XFCE. On the other hand it is based on a slightly more feature-rich toolkit. As long as one isn’t afraid the put some gtk applications in the mix I think it can do everything, but I haven't really used it enough to know for sure. I use xfwm window manager and xscreensaver for screensaver and basic power management. Xscreensaver has always worked for me, but XFCE power management and screensaver I feel less confident about.

A good thing about Kvantum is that it can be used with any desktop environment to theme Qt applications.

I think KDE has the most vibrant theming community. If I see a KDE style that I like I check if there is a Kvantum version available and there often is. There are many Kvantum themes out there (pling.com and especially GitHub). Almost all popular styles I think. What might be missing are color variants.

I would be happy if there were Kvantum themes for official MX themes, but no pressure. I tried the MX themes with the Qt gtk2 plugin and it works well. Just small details like for example overlay scrollbars are quite popular these days, but I don’t know how to get those in a gtk2 theme. And if you use gtk2 to theme Qt that means that Qt will also lack overlay scrollbars.

[asqwerth]

....
A good thing about Kvantum is that it can be used with any desktop environment to theme Qt applications.

Yep. I'm using Kvantum to theme Qt apps in my Anarchy (Arch-based) Gnome install.

......
I would be happy if there were Kvantum themes for official MX themes, but no pressure. I tried the MX themes with the Qt gtk2 plugin and it works well. Just small details like for example overlay scrollbars are quite popular these days, but I don’t know how to get those in a gtk2 theme. And if you use gtk2 to theme Qt that means that Qt will also lack overlay scrollbars.

To be honest, I stopped working on my trial kvantum themes (for mx comfort light and dark) once it was clear that qt6gtk2 plugin was working respectably in our test alpha (no overlay scrollbars, sorry). So the kvantum themes are currently at "good enough" only but will certainly need further improvement. I'm also not a graphic artist, and work by trial and error.

Also, my kvantum themes are based on the look of the mx-comfort themes, and not the gtk theming used in MX25 (mx-comfort themes have no gtk4 theming). While the new theme will use similar colour schemes, there are elements that will be slightly different.

But you are welcome to test them out and give me your feedback. Who knows, I might continue working on it eventually. Note that these are not official.

https://app.box.com/s/7pa6dgkvbb6ku2qstt5sriqdnrwwjl03

[dreamer]

For a gtk based desktop like Xfce it's great to use gtk2 to theme Qt apps since they will respond to changing the gtk3 theme.

I read the document how to create Kvantum themes, but it's a lot of work (like anything computer related). I'm bad at design and never liked Inkscape or working with svg images.

So I fully understand choosing gtk2 theming for Qt apps.

I did try your Kvantum theme. It seemed to work alright. There were parts that could have benefitted from better contrast and the colors were somewhat different than I remember mx-comfort. But all in all it seems you have created a working Kvantum theme. So that's a good start if you want to continue some day.