[DONE] 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
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!)

Last edited by johnraff (2025-11-12 04:12:22)

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.

cog · 2025-11-21 07:24:48

@johnraff, what you want installed is the xdg-desktop-portal-gtk package and a well crafted .config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini file. The file will mostly handle font sizes and then the desktop portal will pick up on the dconf binary. It's GTK4 wierdness.

you need to run this command to get the dconf binary in place

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme "prefer-dark"

this is an example of your gtk-4.0/settings.ini

[Settings]
gtk-theme-name=Adwaita-dark
gtk-icon-theme-name=Adwaita
gtk-font-name=Inter 12
gtk-cursor-theme-name=Adwaita
gtk-cursor-theme-size=0
gtk-toolbar-style=GTK_TOOLBAR_BOTH
gtk-toolbar-icon-size=GTK_ICON_SIZE_LARGE_TOOLBAR
gtk-button-images=1
gtk-menu-images=1
gtk-enable-event-sounds=1
gtk-enable-input-feedback-sounds=1
gtk-xft-antialias=1
gtk-xft-hinting=1
gtk-xft-hintstyle=hintfull
gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme=1

cog · 2025-11-21 07:28:35

qt6 isn't much better..

johnraff · 2025-11-21 08:12:38

cog wrote:

@johnraff, what you want installed is the xdg-desktop-portal-gtk package and a well crafted .config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini file. The file will mostly handle font sizes and then the desktop portal will pick up on the dconf binary. It's GTK4 wierdness.
you need to run this command to get the dconf binary in place
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme "prefer-dark"
this is an example of your gtk-4.0/settings.ini

[Settings]
gtk-theme-name=Adwaita-dark
gtk-icon-theme-name=Adwaita
gtk-font-name=Inter 12
gtk-cursor-theme-name=Adwaita
gtk-cursor-theme-size=0
gtk-toolbar-style=GTK_TOOLBAR_BOTH
gtk-toolbar-icon-size=GTK_ICON_SIZE_LARGE_TOOLBAR
gtk-button-images=1
gtk-menu-images=1
gtk-enable-event-sounds=1
gtk-enable-input-feedback-sounds=1
gtk-xft-antialias=1
gtk-xft-hinting=1
gtk-xft-hintstyle=hintfull
gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme=1

Thanks cog - I'll have a play with this. Is there any way to keep the GTK4 theme synchronized with GTK3? However, right now, the number of GTK4 apps is small so just having a dark theme will do.

The small script I posted before forces the GTK3 theme to GTK4 apps via an environment variable. It works as long as the theme also has GTK4 configs.

cog · 2025-11-21 17:39:53

@johnraff I think the only way to keep them identical right now is to use a theme like adw-gtk3

https://github.com/lassekongo83/adw-gtk3

cog · 2025-11-21 17:42:49

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

hhh · 2025-11-22 00:04:32

cog wrote:

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

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

Regarding GTK4 themes, if you really want to get fancy you can set colors by backing up the symlink to the ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css file and creating a new one. For example...

@import 'colors.css';
 @define-color accent_color #3daee9;

Source...

https://discuss.kde.org/t/simple-hack-t … asma/29444

cog · 2025-11-22 17:47:23

@hhh cool tip!

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

[DONE] A couple of last-minute app substitutions for Carbon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#14 2025-11-21 07:24:48

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

#15 2025-11-21 07:28:35

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

#16 2025-11-21 08:12:38

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

#17 2025-11-21 17:39:53

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

#18 2025-11-21 17:42:49

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

#19 2025-11-22 00:04:32

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

#20 2025-11-22 17:47:23

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

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