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

Dr.Strangelove

Member

From: A movie from the early 60s

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 9

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.

---

- "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: 16,914

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: 9

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: 16,914

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: 16,914

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.

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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: 9

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."

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,914

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

If you're using tint2, those popup tooltip colors are in the config file.

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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: 9

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

A fresh, default Carbon install, hence xfce4-panel 4.20.4.

As I said, it's not really important.

---

- "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."

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,204

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

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.

These themes are complete - GTK, openbox, notifications...

So if you find something in BLOB that you can live with, it might be a good place to start.

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

Dr.Strangelove

Member

From: A movie from the early 60s

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 9

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

So if you find something in BLOB that you can live with, it might be a good place to start.

Did so. Now my panel is gone.
I'll see how to restart it, and how to make it permanent again. I am aware that the program used for the panel changed.

I really think a non-dark theme specifically for carbon that just works would have been a good thing.

Edit: Panel is back after restart.

Can someone please direct me how to change background for grub and login screen in a bunsen/blob compatible manner? Or should I just use the normal way, which should be easy enough to google for?

Last edited by Dr.Strangelove (Yesterday 00:46:55)

---

- "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."

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,204

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

So if you find something in BLOB that you can live with, it might be a good place to start.

Did so. Now my panel is gone.
I'll see how to restart it, and how to make it permanent again. I am aware that the program used for the panel changed.

BLOB should have prompted you to install tint2 when you chose an earlier theme. Did a popup not appear?

Edit: Panel is back after restart.

Ah, maybe BLOB should restart the panel automatically if it is changed from xfce4-panel to tint2. I'll have a look...

Can someone please direct me how to change background for grub and login screen in a bunsen/blob compatible manner? Or should I just use the normal way, which should be easy enough to google for?

BLOB should have presented the login background as a tickable option when switching themes. Otherwise use menu>System Settings>Login Interface

There's no GUI for the grub background though, but any of the googleable methods will work. One way is to put an image in /boot/grub/images/bunsen and make the symlink default.png point to it.

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,914

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

^ Put a png or jpg in /boot/grub, it can be named anything, just end it in jpg or png, whatever the original is. Run 'sudo update-grub'. Reboot, new grub wall if the image works. If not, try a different image (delete the bad wall).

Tested on carbon, it works.

---

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: 16,914

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

I have noticed that the lock screen wall/login (W+l keybind to lock, type password to unlock) is the default carbon theme no matter the login theme, and I have no idea how to change the light-locker theme.

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

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 13,204

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

^We don't use light-locker in Carbon, it's xfce4-screensaver now, and the background is /usr/share/images/bunsen/wallpapers/default/default
It's set in ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-desktop.xml
We don't use xfce4-desktop by default, but that's where xfce4-screensaver looks.

There were issues with light-locker and xfce got rid of it, so so did we.

Last edited by johnraff (Today 02:06:35)

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,914

Website

Re: Light, consistent Theme for Carbon

Ah, thank you! I'm behind the times.

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