Linux Mint Forums

Hi.

Can someone recommend a theme for MATE that gives a dark panel and looks proper everywhere e.g. in nautilus etc..
I've noticed than many themes (even the ones that come with MATE) don't fully function - they appear fine in parts but look aufwl elsewhere.

Should I opt for GTK2 or GTK3 themes?

Thanks.

I registered today to ask the exact same question

The look of Cinnamon is great, unfortunately there is simply too much instability with Compiz and GTK on my laptop. If Cinnamon freezes, it locks up my machine completely. The only way to fix the problem is turn the laptop off. The exact same thing happens with Ubuntu.

Looking forward to an answer to this question.

wickyd wrote:I registered today to ask the exact same question

The look of Cinnamon is great, unfortunately there is simply too much instability with Compiz and GTK on my laptop. If Cinnamon freezes, it locks up my machine completely. The only way to fix the problem is turn the laptop off. The exact same thing happens with Ubuntu.

Looking forward to an answer to this question.

I prefer the dark panel in Cinnamon but had to leave it for MATE due to too many freezes.

I use this combination:

Controls: Greybird (available in the 'shimmer-themes' package from the official repos)
Window border: Zukitwo Dark (from the Webupd8 PPA: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/04/zukitwo- ... dated.html)
Icons: Faenza-Dark (http://tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons-173323228)

Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/POSEt.jpg

KoxxBoxx wrote:I use this combination:

Controls: Greybird (available in the 'shimmer-themes' package from the official repos)

Thanks for the tips. Do you notice that when Greybird is added for Controls that it causes some of KompoZer & Thunderbird to appear incorrectly? Like so [images]. Is there a fix?

It would be great to have a dark panel and a different theme for Control. Is that possible?

RytronII wrote:

KoxxBoxx wrote:I use this combination:

Controls: Greybird (available in the 'shimmer-themes' package from the official repos)

Thanks for the tips. Do you notice that when Greybird is added for Controls that it causes some of KompoZer & Thunderbird to appear incorrectly? Like so [images]. Is there a fix?

It would be great to have a dark panel and a different theme for Control. Is that possible?

Don't use neither Kompozer nor Thunderbird, so I hadn't noticed. But you're right, that doesn't look particularly good.

Re. panel color: I guess you can always play with the background color of an existing theme (right click on panel and select Proporties). Some will look good and others will look bad, so you will have to test them yourself. Here's a screenshot of Zukitwo Dark controls and window border but with an altered panel color (it defaults to a light panel): http://i.imgur.com/HPIot.png. I think it looks pretty good.

KoxxBoxx wrote:Here's a screenshot of Zukitwo Dark controls and window border but with an altered panel color (it defaults to a light panel): http://i.imgur.com/HPIot.png. I think it looks pretty good.

Does that theme setup look good in LibreOffoce, Kompozer and Thunderbird? How did you change the panel color - Gnome Color Chooser or right clicking on panel?

RytronII wrote:Does that theme setup look good in LibreOffoce, Kompozer and Thunderbird? How did you change the panel color - Gnome Color Chooser or right clicking on panel?

LibreOffice looks similar to Kompozer in my screenshot. Can't really test with Thunderbird without setting up an account, so you'll have to try that yourself. To change the color right click on panel, select Properties - Background tab and choose Solid color. Then click the color "button" and adjust the color to fit your needs (I used the color picker to pick a color that matches the window border).

When I install shimmer-themes, where do I go to include them as options? I love this look, and don't see a whole lot of good options for MATE (and can't use Cinnamon due to driver conflict). Thanks in advance!

KoxxBoxx wrote:I use this combination:

Controls: Greybird (available in the 'shimmer-themes' package from the official repos)
Window border: Zukitwo Dark (from the Webupd8 PPA: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/04/zukitwo- ... dated.html)
Icons: Faenza-Dark (http://tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons-173323228)

Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/POSEt.jpg

soccerz619 wrote:When I install shimmer-themes, where do I go to include them as options? I love this look, and don't see a whole lot of good options for MATE (and can't use Cinnamon due to driver conflict). Thanks in advance!

KoxxBoxx wrote:I use this combination:

Controls: Greybird (available in the 'shimmer-themes' package from the official repos)
Window border: Zukitwo Dark (from the Webupd8 PPA: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/04/zukitwo- ... dated.html)
Icons: Faenza-Dark (http://tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons-173323228)

Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/POSEt.jpg

Menu>Preference>Appearance

It's not showing any of those as options in there, though. It didn't update with any other themes or anything in there after I downloaded that. I did find some other from linuxmint-art.org that are working now. Thanks though!

What other themes are available for the MATE desktop? A quick check through the forums here did not reveal much in the Board index ‹ Main Edition Support ‹ Desktops & Window Managers ‹ MATE category.

I have looked on the interwebs at gnome-looks.org but I did not find much there either. The included theme "aurora" in the appearance options does not seem to be working correctly for me and gives an error on trying to apply it.

The oxygen engine theme in the same options on the Mate 1.4 seems to be working fine though but is not my thing.

Thanks.

@meteorrock Any of the GTK2 themes on gnome-looks should work on MATE.

I installed the Shiki themes and it has some dark themes and the panels look pretty good as well.
Now the one thing I have done is kinda merged themes together. Mint-Z-Improved with Shiki-Nouveau-Dust copying elements of one to the other and then modified the living crap out of the gtkrc file and Panel.rc file. Took some time but you learn a lot about theming that way.

Zukiwi looks like a good solution. It'd be great if it was green like Mint-X.

Well, if you like the Ambiance theme that comes with Ubuntu, there is a version of it that works with mate It's almost perfect, but as you can see from my attached screenshot, the panel notification area looks flat. Apart from that though, it's perfect! I'll upload it here if you ask me.

Hamish

hamishmb wrote:Well, if you like the Ambiance theme that comes with Ubuntu, there is a version of it that works with mate It's almost perfect, but as you can see from my attached screenshot, the panel notification area looks flat. Apart from that though, it's perfect! I'll upload it here if you ask me.

Hamish

Hi Hamish.

Is that one of these? http://www.noobslab.com/2014/04/ambianc ... stall.html

I've found the Greybird theme good - just like in default Xubuntu.

Sort of, although I'm not sure those work with MATE. I installed mine from a .tar.gz file, and it was ambiance crunchy, so presumably it's almost the same thing.

Hamish

hamishmb wrote:Sort of, although I'm not sure those work with MATE. I installed mine from a .tar.gz file, and it was ambiance crunchy, so presumably it's almost the same thing.

Hamish

The PPA works in MATE. Although the theme is not as complete as Greybird. The menus in Thunderbird with ambiance crunchy look odd. A green version of Greybird would be cool - they could name it "Greenbird".