HOW TO? Easily change 20.2 Mate theme to mimic 18.3

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Blessings Esteemed Forum Participants & Lurkers:
NOTE: Attemting to move from LM18.3 Mate 64 to LM20.2 Mate 64 LOCKED LiveMedia system

Gads ... moving my LiveMedia system from LM18.3 (EOL), which I have used for several years, to LM20.2 (LTS) is a gross migraine inducing trauma. My printer doesn't work, the codecs don't load, and all of the operational hints provided by icon styles and file sort order are scrambled, which leads to the question of this post:

Is there any easy way to change the entire theme of LM20.2 Mate 64 to very closely mimic LM18.3 Mate 64? To achieve that would be an immense blessing. Thank you for any and all comments, suggestions, and assistance.

Blessings in abundance, all the best,
Art in Carlisle, PA USA

[mikeflan]

file sort order are scrambled

Can you supply a sort order for each system? Or at least the perceived incorrect sort order.

[rickNS]

Is there any easy way to change the entire theme of LM20.2 Mate 64 to very closely mimic LM18.3 Mate 64?

If I remember correctly the main difference in appearance is the icon theme change.
To change it back to the mint-x icons do
Menu > Appearance
Click "Customize", click the icons tab, then choose any of Mint-X options.

I guess if you want you can also use the Mint 18 wall paper, ha, I do.
Known simply as linuxmint.jpg.
cropped screenshot.

It's still included in Mint 20 (and 20.1)

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Blessings mikeflan !
Here is a screen dump of the top portion of the default sort of the LM18.3 Caja (v 1.18.5) file browser window. Notice the very distinctive "script" icons as compared to the text file icons.

Here is a screen dump of the top portion of the default sort of the LM20.2 Caja (v 1.24.0) file browser window. Notice that there is hardly any differentiation between a "script" and a "text" icon.

I am definitely "senior" and have a minor difficulty reading text from the screen, and I have special "computer glasses" to help. I am mostly an "appliance user" and I have been using LM18 so long that I don't have to read the file name any more - I can just pick out the icon I want by position. That is why the radical changes in LM20 are so disturbing. If you notice, I use file prefixes ("0_ etc.") to force a sort order for the files I want to appear at the top of the list.

The files are sorted in a substantially different order in the 2 systems as shown in the Caja windows. Of no particular importance, the "ls" directory listings are different from each other for the 2 distros, but also, each Caja window sort is slightly different from the same-system default "ls" sort. I have included the full directory for the above windows. It was generated using "ls -l --group-directories-first" in the LM18.3 system.

LM18p3-ls.txt

(1.62 KiB) Downloaded 10 times

NOTE to rickNS :
What is/are the "GUI theme(s)" used in LM18.3 and LM20.2? They are obviously VERY different. How might I change them from the command line (I run a LOCKED LiveMedia system and need to put it in a script)? The wallpaper on the desk top is totally inconsequential, and I know how to change that if I wanted to.

Thank you for your post, and my sincere appreciation for any and all comments, suggestions, and assistance.
Blessings in abundance, all the best,
Art in Carlisle, PA USA

[rickNS]

What is/are the "GUI theme(s)" used in LM18.3 and LM20.2? They are obviously VERY different.

Actually NOT VERY different. With the exception of two themes, (Adwaita, and High Contrast) from Mint 18 missing in Mint 20, all the rest are the same.

I still have a Mint 18 disk, so I booted it, here's screen shot of the themes.

(I run a LOCKED LiveMedia system

Your biggest (or one of) bug seems to be that the script icons are similar to plain text file icons, That is because your running "live", if you actually installed Mint 20 you would have the "normal" terminal looking icon for script files.
Mint 20 MATE.

ksnip211205-153234.png (33.9 KiB) Viewed 678 times

[mikeflan]

I must say I like the 18.3 sort order better than the 20.2 sort order.
Maybe this will be interesting reading for you:
viewtopic.php?p=2052875#p2052875

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Blessings & THANK YOU mikeflan!
Thanks to xenopeek as well. His post is MOST EXCELLENT! There is NO LC_COLLATE in the 20.2 Mate /etc/default/locale file - I'll have to switch to 18.2 to see what it has.

Blessings in abundance, all the best,
Art in Carlisle, PA USA

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Bad news (at least for me) ...
Each single line in /etc/default/locale is different for the 2 systems, but ... A REBOOT is required once the file is edited, which is no help for a LiveMedia system. However, changes can be implemented in the User configuration.

Code: Select all

# /etc/default/locale
# LM 18.3 Mate 64:
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
# LM 20.2 Mate 64:
LANG=C.UTF-8

Here are some good links for this interesting topic:
www.tecmint.com/set-system-locales-in-linux/
help.ubuntu.com/community/Locale
www.tutorialspoint.com/how-to-change-or-set-system-locales-in-linux

Blessings in abundance, all the best,
Art in Carlisle, PA USA