[ SOLVED ] GTK 2 Themes Not Supported in LL5

[johnausten13]

Thanks for the replies! I like to tinker with the overall 'Appearance' of my LL version every now and then. I'm stuck with Boomerang Project Themes but don't get me wrong, I love it. I agree that the transition should be smooth and less hassle.

[Şerban S.]

Better let let GTK2 die a natural death. My personal position is that I do not like to prolong superseded linux software technologies. It gets messy, people spend time supporting defunct technologies when that time should be spent helping people with supported issues, devs stop developing for the most part for those versions, etc etc. There are a multitude of sensible, logical reasons to move on.

You're sure right, beyond any doubt. I guess we're here to share our experience when facing times of change, like that.
It's too much to ask everybody to update at once all the Apps, so, quoting you, "Better let GTK2 die a natural death.". Still, this takes time and we need "transitional" solutions, so to speak.
The days when Linux had a few apps, are long gone. Now, there are thousands and keeping all "top-notch", is just a fantasy. There are on the other hand valuable apps with a single developer behind and it takes some more time to move from one VCL kit to another.
I use GThumb for one, since it allows me to do resizing and cropping very fast, without any fuss.
Lately, it worked from bad to worse. RAM consumption increased; Apps hung, lots of swapping (on a SSD?!!) and the like.
I Replaced LL 4.8 with 5.0. My "AllInstall" script, failed to install GThumb, so I had to check what was wrong. I installed it via Synaptic, and here we go!
A brand new GThumb is available! Works great.
I assume at the time I was running tests on LL 5.0, the release was still to come, that's why my installer failed.
This is only one example. The other is LibreOffice, then OpenShot, that once refused to work and crushed yesterday, and then next day, I found an update on the LL list and the bug was gone.
It happens all the time.
Have a great day, and thanks again for the idea with the Themes engine!
PS: I switched to GTK3 themes since LL 4.6, I guess. I had some trouble finding the working combination, but now I'm fine. Or at least, nothing bad came in so far.

[Jerry]

Better let let GTK2 die a natural death. My personal position is that I do not like to prolong superseded linux software technologies. It gets messy, people spend time supporting defunct technologies when that time should be spent helping people with supported issues, devs stop developing for the most part for those versions, etc etc. There are a multitude of sensible, logical reasons to move on.

[Şerban S.]

[...]
"In theory distributions can decide to disable Gtk+2 already. However there are still some applications that rely on the libraries that are not yet ported to Gtk+3 (see the Roadmap page, e.g. Ristretto) so those would be broken by that change. [...]

Hi, Jerry!
Thanks for the info!. Very useful!
Based on your suggestion, using Synaptic PM, I found the lib that takes care of the themes:

Code: [Select]

gtk3-engines-unico[/b]
Now, in order to fix this kind of problems, the solution we can use is to search with:
"GTK3 Replacement themes for  GTK2 ...[ThemeName]".
The problem with the themes is serious. It seems that LibreOffice for one, gives complicated results when messing with the themes. Broken tables, transparent selections and lots of other trouble related to the color schemes wich are governed by the themes, via system settings.
Here is an example: I had to replace the provided version with an older one, due to tables breaking in all documents. I found a version that works with the current settings, but when I make a selection, the selection flashes fast. It's usable though. I mentioned this as an example. I had also trouble with the File Manager, just as pointed in this thread, so some settings that work fine with LibreOffice, break the usability of the File Manager and so on.
I had the same trouble for years with Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Manjaro so the cause might be only XFCE related. Way too many coincidences to be Core OS related.
Far worse, when I tested Cinnamon and Mate, I ended up with the same trouble so it seems that the problems are more complex than a user can easily handle, even digging for articles (I do this...).
With KDE might be different, but I stopped using KDE since Mandriva 2009 and Mandriva One.
When I spoke about "Ecosystem" that is what I meant:
Linux Lite is more flexible, and I could find solutions easier than in the other distros.
In Romanian folklore is a tale about making cope together a goat, a cabbage and a wolf. It's very much the same here...
Trying to blend somehow lots of Apps under the same hood...

[johnausten13]

I guess it's time to move on with the GTK 2 Themes. I was just surprised at first because I used to have Crux and Clearlooks for my file manager 'look'. Now they are gone. I installed some Windows theme from Boomerang Project as alternate themes. Still glad they have both enabled GTK-2 and GTK-3 themes.

[trinidad]

https://github.com/jpfleury/clearlooks-phenix

TC

[Jerry]

Source - https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2019/07/01/xfce-4-14pre2-released/

"In theory distributions can decide to disable Gtk+2 already. However there are still some applications that rely on the libraries that are not yet ported to Gtk+3 (see the Roadmap page, e.g. Ristretto) so those would be broken by that change.

As soon as we have stable releases of all applications in a Gtk+3 version we will probably remove Gtk+2 support altogether.
For the panel we will at least disable Gtk+2 support by default upstream as there are only very few unported plugins."

I see some of our gtk2 packages that are installed, are still relied on as deps. I'm sure gtk2 will be completely gone without any of these issues by 22.04
Removing gtk2-engines didn't seem to do any harm, taking with it a number of the now defunct gtk2 themes.

[johnausten13]

All of the GTK 2 Themes are not showing in the Appearance application. Only GTK 3 themes are showing up. Themes such as Crux, Clearlooks, etc are not on the Appearance>Styles List.