#1 2026-04-18 23:13:06

Dr.Strangelove

Member

From: A movie from the early 60s

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 6

Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

Just installed Carbon on a new machine intended to be my main workhorse for probably at least the next three years. The machine that will be substituted by it was also running Bunsenlabs, as was its predecessor.
I love me an OS that just keeps out of the way, receives the necessary security updates and lets me do my work.

If I see it correctly, there are two themes specifically designed for Carbon (as concerns e.g. the taskbar) included, and both are dark. For my aging eyes, I need to get more light into them and thus am looking for a light theme that is applied in a consistent manner -- I am no expert in themeing, but that probably means that the openbox theme, the themeing for KDE and GTK programs, the icon set and whatnot are included. Reasonably high contrast is also a necessity, I am not talking about a high-contrast-optimization, but anything like medium grey text on a light grey background, as seen on too many websites these days, would be bad.

Is there such a thing? Will one be included in further updates? Not wanting to complain about a gift horse's teeth, but at least one good light theme would have been great.

If there is a documentation what it needs to make a truely consistent theme, I am willing to give it a try, but I'd rather just take a functioning existing one and be done with it ;-)
Please advise.

Anyway, many many thanks for Bunsenlabs, and for Crunchbang before (if any dev from that time is still around) -- it has made my life easier and more pleasant.

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- "Strangelove? What kind of a name is that? That ain't no Kraut name, is it, Stainesey?"
- "He changed it when he became a citizen. Used to be Merkwuerdigeliebe."

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,886

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

^ There are light versions of both of the default Adwaita/Yaru themes in the default carbon install. There are also several other light themes for gtk, openbox and xfce4-notifyd on carbon. I'd be glad to give a walkthrough of how to change all the different settings to set it all (the settings are all under "User Settings, then Appearance, ObConf, Notifications will get you most of the way there). If something like "Lithium-light" doesn't work, we'll find you something else.

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I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

Dr.Strangelove

Member

From: A movie from the early 60s

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 6

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

That'd be great, thanks.
The Adwaita/Yaru themes are "full" bunsen themes, or openbox only?
I'll be able to have a look at it in maybe 12 or more hours, appreciate the offer.

---

- "Strangelove? What kind of a name is that? That ain't no Kraut name, is it, Stainesey?"
- "He changed it when he became a citizen. Used to be Merkwuerdigeliebe."

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,886

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

From the Main Menu...

Start typing and choose "appearance" and set the gtk (Widgets) and icon themes (example; bunsen-yaru-bark widgets and material-solorized-bark-icons).

Type and choose "obconf" and set the Openbox theme (ex; bunsen-yaru-bark).

Type and choose "notifications" and set the notification appearance (ex; bunsen-yaru-bark).

Logout.

You can also type "blob" in the menu and use some themes stored in the BLOB Theme Manager gui, and save custom themes to it.

---

I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,886

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

Also, love your avatar. The joke is that "Merkwuerdigeliebe" is a literal translation of "strange love" or "remarkable love", or the other way around, right?

The original ending was a giant pie fight in the War Room, Kubrick decided it was too much.

Weird movie. Kubrick was nuts.

---

I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

Dr.Strangelove

Member

From: A movie from the early 60s

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 6

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

Did all that, thanks.
Did choose a boring blue/grey setup for now, which suits me well. Back in Crunchbang days, I found the very dark appearance just cool, but now the lenses of my eyes do not let all light they receive through, so I do need some more photon input to start with.

appearance: widgets Raleigh and icon theme Material-Solarized-common

obconf: Openbox theme Clearlooks-3.4

notifications: softwaves

The popup-notifications that appear for example when you hover over an icon in the taskbar are still white font on black, which is not quite consistent, but that of course is a very minor matter.

Also Firefox, when left to the theme-preference System/Auto, still chooses a dark theme (and displays themed websites in their dark version, e.g. london1644.info) but I could set a specified light theme and a preference to show websites in light display mode. Only documenting this in case a light theme for carbon gets added, will also supply similar observations later to this thread for the same purpose.

I forgot to notice that when I wrote in the original post "a new machine": new to me, that is, it is already about three years old, I think :-D

OT:

The joke is that "Merkwuerdigeliebe" is a literal translation of "strange love" or "remarkable love", or the other way around, right?

Yeah, right. Liebe is "love", and merkwürdig (mark-worthy) in the last about 200 years or so has had no other meaning than "peculiar", though before that it could mean "worthy to be noticed/memorized".
Don't worry about the "e" in the middle, it is a grammar thing, necessary because Liebe has female grammatical gender.

---

- "Strangelove? What kind of a name is that? That ain't no Kraut name, is it, Stainesey?"
- "He changed it when he became a citizen. Used to be Merkwuerdigeliebe."