The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers

Sometimes I wonder why there isn't more enthusiasm around theming. Chicago95[0] is popular, but I also love how Garuda[0] themes KDE. There's some small websites for downloading themes on various DEs, but most of them are a bit jank and it seems built-in support beyond basic things like accents aren't there.

[0] https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 [1] https://garudalinux.org/editions (screenshots don't do it justice)

The Gnome/gtk folks have been systematically removing theming capabilities for the last decade+ in the pursuit of an Apple-like philosophy towards ui. This has really killed a lot of theming because so many apps use GTK.

Even before that, GTK app theming was a bit hit or miss, likely because of the way GTK uses CSS for themes.

Personally I believe CSS to be quite ill-suited for the purpose. It’s ok if you’re writing a theme for a bespoke one-off app but breaks down in the system theme use case. In particular, CSS inheritance makes for a lot of unnecessary trouble for both third-party themes and accessibility affordances.

Last I knew there was something of a disinclination away from paramaterization in the GTK dev sphere too, which is another significant problem for third party themes and accessibility. Hardcoded fonts, colors, etc makes for pointless brittle rigidity.