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shantanu
Asked: 2015-07-28 12:02:22 +0800 CST

What is the default GTK 3 Theme Engine in Ubuntu Unity?

  • 772

I was trying to install ubuntu-desktop package in Ubuntu-Gnome(gnome shell). Using unity-tweak I set theme as Ambiance. But only gtk2 applications are looking good. All gtk3 application has ugly border(header bar) and background(sometimes). I have attached a screenshot.

What is the default gtk3-theme-engine in Ubuntu unity?

enter image description here

Edit

if I run gtk3 application with root permission then theme is okay. I also created a new user but result is same. enter image description here

themes

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I don't think the gtk3-theme-engine is the one you are looking for. Anyway this is on fresh installed Ubuntu 14.04 machine:

    $ locate theming-engines
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/theming-engines
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/theming-engines/libunico.so

$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/theming-engines/libunico.so
gtk3-engines-unico:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/theming-engines/libunico.so

$ apt-cache rdepends gtk3-engines-unico
gtk3-engines-unico
Reverse Depends:
  light-themes
  libgtk-3-0

    References:

    It seems to me, a configuration problem.

    • Check the environment variables by runing env look for GTK_THEME, GTK_RC_FILES, GTK_CSD.

      env | grep -i gtk

    • Look if you have gtkrc in your home folder

      sudo find ~/ -iname gtkrc

    GTK_THEME force Gtk3 application to use custom themes folder.

    GTK_RC_FILES can change some Gtk3 theme settings/properties.

    GTK_CSD tells Gtk3 to use Wayland Client Side Decoration, and default for Gtk3 application is to use the new header bar.

    Well it was found by shantanu (OP):

    WOW, I found the culprit. export GTK_CSD=1 was in /etc/profile. And this variable was forcing gtk3 application to use CSD header.

    • 4

  2. My best guess is that the version of the Ambiance theme that is available is not fully compatible with the version of GTK+ that we ship.

    It would probably be a lot easier for you and provide a better experience to use Ubuntu vanilla than to try to install Unity in elementary OS.

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  3. I have got a partial solution. Using gtk3-nocsd, we can disable client side decoration. For Unity, we have to use this for an application separately. You cannot set it in environment. (i.e To fix gnome-terminal, edit /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop and modify Exec= line as following)

    EXEC=env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/gtk3-nocsd/gtk3-nocsd.so gnome-terminal

    How to install gtk3-nocsd:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk3-nocsd
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  4. If you want to use GTK, first change your display manager. Perform following operations.

    sudo apt-get install gdm
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

    You will get a screen like this...enter image description here

    choose "gdm" using your cursor and then press enter.

    Then you can restart the machine (optional), or just log out and login to "gnome-shell"

    Therafter you can use "tweak-tool" 

    sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

    Open the tweak-tool. Here you can choose whatever theme you may like, but make sure "Window" & "GTK+" has the same theme, else you will get the issue as you mentioned, that the window headers will be different.

    I personally like Vertex theme. Try it out.. its quite brilliant,especially the dark one. enter image description here

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