XFCE4 ricing guide - sovl edition

There still is a sovlful GNU/Linux GUI that's comfy to use.

This guide will show you how. While it's nothing particularly difficult, it will have some not-so-obvious tips that I wish someone told me about earlier.

The guide assumes certain pre-requisites:

Of course, this all can be done on other distros, but Debian is the one I'm using, so the guide is specifically for it. There is only one step that's somewhat distro specific, but more on that later. The final result can look like this:

Hinamizawa desktop How my desktop looks like on my laptop (click for full size image)

First step: installing some themes

This is pretty much essential. Since we want our desktop to have SOVL, modern minimalist sloppa won't work. Most of the themes linked already have icons that go with them. I recommend the following:

Go ahead and install your preferred one or all of them. The instructions are usually on their respective pages. If not, installing a GTK theme is as easy as copying its directory to ~/.themes or ~/.icons in case of an icon theme. It should look like this: 

.themes/
└── your-gtk-theme-directory
.icons/
└── your-icon-theme-directory

Optional step: Panel and panel profiles

How you set up your panel is up to you, but I suggest installing xfce4-panel-profiles to manage your panel layouts. It comes with some existing presets, such as GNOME 2 that I personally like a lot. What I also like to do is to change the clock appearance to LCD and add a 2px border width to the panel so that window buttons have a sort of ridge/padding around them. If you want your panel to be, e.g. 30px tall, set the border width to 2px and row size to 28px in panel preferences.

Step two: installing gtk3-classic

Now we shall move on to installing gtk3-classic. gtk3-classic is a set of patches for gtk3 that revert some of the nu-GNOME-centric design changes, consequently making gtk3 look more like gtk2 did. The changes aren't drastic, but they are noticeable, especially if you know where to look. See the project's homepage for comparisons. There are some downsides to all this, but it's got to do not with the project itself, but rather how it's implemented. Unfortunately, official Debian/Ubuntu builds have ended some time ago, so we'll have to rely on a 3rd party community repository, courtesy of khumba. While I've had no issues thus far, the result will be a bit of a FrankenDebian system, so I recommend you learn about the implications of it and make an informed decision whether you want to proceed. Packages related to gtk3 will be overwritten with 3rd party builds with the gtk3-classic patches applied.

If you're fine with all that, go ahead and get his repository added to your Debian system. The instructions are on that page, just follow them. Once that's done, install the libgtk-3-bin package from that repository. Any necessary dependencies will be installed from it as well. As root, run the following:

# apt install -t kh-trixie-extras libgtk-3-bin

When it finishes, it would be best to simply restart the computer. Once you reboot, gtk3-classic should just work. The best way to test this is to right click in the gtk file picker in e.g. Firefox. The difference is quite clear, with gtk3-classic the right-click menu should look something like this:

gtk3-classic file picker

You might want to use apt's pinning or priority features to prevent gtk3-classic from being overwritten by updates from Debian's repositories.

Step three: finishing touches

You'll likely find that some icons, for example in the settings manager and the default application menu don't follow your custom icon theme. To fix that, we will change the default application menu to the Whisker menu. Unlike the default one, the Whisker menu allows changing launcher icons. Furthermore, the icons in the settings manager are actually derived from the launcher icons in the Whisker menu. Finally, I think the Whisker menu looks much better than the default one, so we're killing three birds with one stone.

XFCE settings with mismatched icons Settings manager, notice the non-matching icons in Desktop or Removable Drives and Media entries.

Go ahead and swap the default application menu with the Whisker menu. You can do that in Panel -> Items -> Add, where you should be able to find the Whisker menu. If for some reason it's not there, see if you have the xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin package installed.

Afterwards, remove the default application menu and open the Whisker menu you just added. You can then right click on entries you want to change, select Edit Application and you'll be presented with an option to change the icon. You can use whatever you think fits best. In my case, the settings manager looks like the image below. Launchers in the Whisker menu also use those icons.

XFCE settings with matching icons

Thunar tweaks

Thunar can use nu-GNOME's symbolic icons for the sidebar menu. This isn't the default setting, at least on Debian. If for some reason that's not the case, you can disable that in Edit -> Preferences -> Side Pane -> uncheck Use symbolic folder icons

Client-side decorations (CSD)

Client-side decorations are huge, ugly titlebars meant to be used with nu-GNOME programs. Much like with Thunar, CSD aren't enabled by default and gtk3-classic disables them anyway. If for some reason this isn't the case, you can fix it in Settings Editor -> xsettings -> uncheck DialogsUseHeader.

Optional step: bitmap fonts

Although most of those themes look fine with vector fonts, bitmap fonts can enhance the aesthetic further, especially with older themes like Raleigh or Bluecurve. On Debian, bitmap fonts are disabled by default, but enabling them is quite easy. Go ahead and run the following in your terminal with root privileges:

# dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

For most of the dialogs, just select whatever you think is fine or what the dialog info suggests (I will say that you might want to set hinting to slight since anything higher greatly deforms vector fonts). The important one is the one that asks you whether to enable bitmap fonts or not, select Yes.

After you log out and log back in, bitmap fonts should display. Since somewhat recently, anything that uses Pango for fonts supports only the OTB format for bitmap fonts. PCF and BDF won't work. I'll leave it up to you which font to use, because there are too many to count. I personally suggest Cronyx Helvetica (I got it from Chicago95, since the one from repositories had trouble displaying) for Sans, and Terminus for Monospace. You can find even more bitmap fonts here.

You can install them with apt if available in the repositories, or drop the files to /usr/share/fonts or ~/.local/share/fonts. Run fc-cache -fv if installing manually. Unlike with themes, they don't need to be in their own directories, although it can help with organisation.

Problems unsolved

Some icons still don't match the icon theme

This is something I've observed with some icon themes, such as the one from MATE or Raleigh. This can be easily seen in the log out screen, for example. Unlike with application launchers, there's no way to change these icons in an ordinary fashion. Until I find a way to fix this, the only solution seems to be using an icon theme that happens to cover these icons, such as Bluecurve.

Power manager tray icon uses nu-GNOME's symbolic icon

This time around, no icon theme I've tried ever changed the apperance of power manager's tray icon. It also seems not possible to easily change the icon to a different one. I recommend using the battery plugin instead. It too has an unchangeable icon, but it looks significantly better, and the applet itself has more functionality and customisation compared to the power manager.

Conclusion

As you can see, it's still very much possible to have a sovlful looking desktop without jumping through too many hoops. That said, the future isn't looking too bright, what with GTK4 and libadwaita on the horizon, quite a few GTK programs having already switched to it, now looking like straight out of nu-GNOME. But, looking how long GTK2 held out, I expect it'll still be a few more years till XFCE switches to GTK4, and even more until Debian updates to it.

Alternatives?

Although this guide doesn't cover them, if for whatever reason you don't like XFCE, you can try LXDE or MATE. For MATE in particular, gtk3-classic offers a minor visual update. LXDE is for the most part gtk2, with some programs being gtk3, like the terminal and PCManFM. The themes will work the same for the two.

To do: