A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

johnraff · 2025-10-29 06:51:25

lxterminal > xfce4-terminal
Can be set to automatically follow the system theme. Saves some work.
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 24#p146324

arandr > lxrandr
Simpler GUI and easier to understand than arandr. Will need a wrapper script so it can save settings.
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 34#p146334
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 38#p146438

file-roller > engrampa EDIT: provisionally to xarchiver EDIT 251225: no, back to file-roller
In Trixie file-roller is white and refuses to follow the GTK theme unless you pass it an environment variable:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 95#p146495
Maybe we can add the appropriate envvar to the session whenever the GTK theme is changed (might work with other GTK4 apps too) but if that all turns out to be too much trouble, we could switch to engrampa, which is almost the same but GTK3.

Any comments?

Other last-minute swaps? (Not too many of those please!)

EDIT added nwg-look for consideration EDIT 251225 and added in place of lxappearance

Last edited by johnraff (2025-12-25 06:20:50)

PackRat · 2025-10-29 09:54:48

Does engrampa pull in any of the mate desktop?

There is also xarchiver. Not tied to any desktop environment and should follow the gtk theme.

Edit - screenshot so you can see xarchiver without installing:

greenjeans · 2025-10-29 15:07:06

PackRat wrote:

Does engrampa pull in any of the mate desktop?

None of the main desktop stuff, only one small (102 kb) library which is libcaja-extensions, the rest of it's depends are just ordinary system stuff. Apparently caja requires that to interact with it. I use it in Openbox with PcmanFM for many years now, it's a nice program, simple and looks good and most definitely accepts gtk3 theming with no issues.

RE: lxrandr, good call, have used that extensively as well, not too pretty but gets the job done and is simple to use.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-10-29 15:09:38)

PackRat · 2025-10-29 15:23:41

^ That's good. I used to use engrampa when I was using caja (thunar didn't have split-pane view). As you pointed out, accepts gtk3 no problems.

PackRat · 2025-10-29 15:27:53

Yes to lxterminal -> xfce4-terminal now that BL is using xfce4-panel.

Team Xfce is making good progress on their tools working in Wayland with labwc. Should be better for BL in the long run.

unklar · 2025-10-29 15:41:24

lxterminal > xfce4-terminal = OK
arandr > lxrandr = OK
file-roller > engrampa = no OK xarchiver = OK

johnraff · 2025-10-30 02:25:28

unklar wrote:

file-roller > engrampa = no OK xarchiver = OK

@unklar what is the problem with engrampa?

I tried xarchiver some time ago and didn't like it - I forget why though.

johnraff · 2025-10-30 07:17:30

^I've just installed and tried xarchiver and engrampa, and I couldn't find anything particularly wrong with xarchiver, though engrampa makes eg opening a .deb file a bit simpler and looks slightly nicer. OTOH xarchiver is a much smaller install.

Does anyone else have an opinion on those two?

PS file-roller was slower than either of them to open an archive.

PS2 Engrampa refused to open a particular .tar.gz file that the other two had no problem with.

Last edited by johnraff (2025-10-30 07:22:03)

hhh · 2025-10-31 04:38:48

We already have mate-desktop-common or something because of mate-polkit. Engrampa should be fine, no?

-edit- No, it's mate-polkit-common that gets installed, never mind. I don't see anything wrong with engrampa, though.

Last edited by hhh (2025-10-31 04:41:52)

johnraff · 2025-11-04 06:38:19

hhh wrote:

I don't see anything wrong with engrampa, though.

Well, I just posted what I found wrong with it.
'tar' had no issues with the same file, so I guess it has to be a bug somewhere in the code that engrampa uses to sort through file-types. I remember file-roller had some issues like that in the past, but I think they got fixed.

sleekmason wrote:

Is it possible your file is just labeled incorrectly and can't be read by engrampa?

This was it - the file is described as "POSIX tar archive (GNU)" but that's still a defect in engrampa IMO. Other archivers are OK with it.

Right now, my vote is xarchiver because it's much smaller than file-roller or engrampa. If a chubby one is essential, then file-roller with a GTK theme hack.

micko01 · 2025-11-04 10:57:32

I'm afraid I'm of absolutely no use to this discussion! I've never had any time whatsoever for GUI archivers. Never liked any of them so I always decompress/compress on the CLI, no matter the format.

johnraff · 2025-11-05 03:58:10

xarchiver seems to run OK on Wayland without xwayland. (The other two do too though.)

johnraff · 2025-11-11 07:54:25

I made this wrapper for lxrandr so that the user autostart file it creates to save new settings will run on other setups than lxde:

#!/bin/sh
#
# lxrandr writes saved settings to ~/.config/autostart/lxrandr-autostart.desktop
# which contains the line:
# OnlyShowIn=LXDE
# This wrapper script comments out that line so it will run on other desktops.

config_file=$HOME/.config/autostart/lxrandr-autostart.desktop
comment_line_regex='^[[:blank:]]*OnlyShowIn='

lxrandr

[ -e "$config_file" ] || exit 0 # nothing to do

[ -w "$config_file" ] || {
    echo "${0}: cannot write to $config_file" >&2
    exit 1
}

sed -i "/$comment_line_regex/ s/^/#/" "$config_file" || {
    echo "${0}: sed error" >&2
    exit 1
}

Also added a .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications with the exec line changed to 'lxrandr.wrapper' so it should work in menus.

johnraff · 2025-11-30 02:01:56

xfce4-terminal configs

Just a note for devs that the configuration for xfce4-terminal is now: ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-terminal.xml

It's not all bad news though, because if you have xfconf installed (most xfce apps will pull it in) then you can use xfconf-query to script backup and restore configs easily, and restored configs will appear immediately because of the xconf daemon.

---
btw I'm quite tired of having to remember whether to type xfce or xfce4.

hhh · 2025-11-30 03:50:49

Exxfconfxfwm4scuse me?

dconf it all!

*grumbles in xml*

johnraff · 2025-12-03 01:59:43

The GTK4 theming discussion is now in its own thread: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=9606

Please continue there - it's an important topic that will likely affect us more and more in the future.

johnraff · 2025-12-05 04:26:59

nwg-look

cog wrote:

Also yall might wanna look into nwg-look instead of lxappearance for setting themes. It’s in the Trixie repos.

hhh wrote:

I use nwg-look (aka GTK Settings) on Wayland.

I've also been using nwg-look on my Wayland VM and it works well.
What I hadn't done was try it on X11, but when I did try it the other day was surprised to find it seemed perfectly OK.

Is anybody using nwg-look regularly on X? Does it seem OK for you?

If so, let's switch lxappearance to nwg-look in Carbon. It would only mean editing package lists and menus. (I guess the "Appearance" menu title could stay the same?)

The fewer apps that are different on X and Wayland the better.

cog · 2025-12-05 05:13:54

@John, glad you’re enjoying it too. NWG and I collaborated on it a lot in the beginning. He really knocked it out of the park. He’s mainly a python guy but wrote that one in golang.

johnraff · 2025-12-05 09:12:37

On the debian package page it says

GTK3 settings editor for wlroots environments like Sway

So I was surprised to find it seems to work on X11 too.

In fact there's no mention of X anywhere in the docs, so I'm a bit worried about throwing it at users as the default theme setting app. Do you have any advice on that?

Last edited by johnraff (2025-12-05 09:26:24)

cog · 2025-12-05 16:20:44

When nwg-look started off nwg-shell supported i3 & openbox along with sway. Then nwg-shell became a more sway and now hyprland focused project. nwg-look still has good X11 support because of it's roots and the toolkit it uses is gtk3 for the gui via gotk3. https://github.com/gotk3/gotk3 That's about all I know really. I just use it because I like it better than LXAppearance and I'm friends with NWG.

#1 2025-10-29 06:51:25

A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#2 2025-10-29 09:54:48

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#3 2025-10-29 15:07:06

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#4 2025-10-29 15:23:41

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#5 2025-10-29 15:27:53

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#6 2025-10-29 15:41:24

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#7 2025-10-30 02:25:28

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#8 2025-10-30 07:17:30

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#9 2025-10-31 04:38:48

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#10 2025-11-04 06:38:19

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#11 2025-11-04 10:57:32

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#12 2025-11-05 03:58:10

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#13 2025-11-11 07:54:25

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#14 2025-11-30 02:01:56

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#15 2025-11-30 03:50:49

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#16 2025-12-03 01:59:43

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#17 2025-12-05 04:26:59

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#18 2025-12-05 05:13:54

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#19 2025-12-05 09:12:37

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

#20 2025-12-05 16:20:44

Re: A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

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