Installed the latest version of Manjaro, set my theme and was surprised how many apps looked completely different:
Pix had its own idea of decorators, couldn’t be resized, and was about twice as large as my monitor.
Pamac ignored any theme hints (GTK_THEME in .profie or environment) and was white (while having a dark theme)
Solution: I replaced it with pamac-gtk3.
Audacious had classic Window decorations but ignored any theming as well. I am wary of installing gt5-systeplugins or qt6gtk2 since both must be recompiled on Qt changes, which (for example) my 83 old mother will not do. (Other than that, she gets along with Manjaro very well)
I’m disappointed by this clutter of different appearances. The quality of some applications like fonts or visibility is hardly bearable.
Are there plans to change this? Note that setting the GTK_THEME in /etc/environment did not help any.
Are there different means to configure a homogeneous look and feel on XFCE?
I would also appreciate some support for QT/KDE applications which are installed by default.
First - you are barking up the wrong tree, as they say.
Manjaro doesnt develop XFCE … or any desktop for that matter.
You also chose XFCE … notorious for slow adoption … and then expect the latest (non-compatible library) apps to follow its settings?
There also seems to be confusion here … you absolutely must set your QT theme … in order to style QT apps … most people take this into consideration and either avoid toolkits outside of their Desktop toolkit (GTK apps only on a GTK desktop) … or choose a theme that is provided in both formats.
You cant simply apply a GTK theme and expect QT apps to follow it.
And with XFCE, as already noted, theres the caveat that it only relatively recently adopted GTK3 … so hoping GTK4 will work perfectly is a bit presumptive … and thats even assuming whatever stylization you have attempted is actually compatible. For all we know you are using a theme that is GTK3 only so neither QT, nor GTK2, nor GTK4 have provided styles.
In whatever case … your ‘disappointment’ is misdirected.
For more information … see … a lot of things, like how styling works on linux desktops, etc.
Maybe here are as good as any to begin with:
Well this is linux. There is a choice of kits to develop UI. Some use GTK (with X subversions), some QT (with X subversions), some KDE (with X subversions), and then there are some that does not use them at all and make their own thing, like tigervnc client.
You can try to unify things in Appearance (GTK3), Kvantum and QT5 Settings. And that leaves only the GTK4 apps. For them you can somewhat remedy that with a config file. Not perfect, but better that nothing.
Back in the days where I was working much more and much harder than now - the clutter as you call it was one reason it took me many years to move to Linux.
My lack of time simply threw me off track …
That said - it has become better - but you have to acknowledge that what @cscs is correct.
Mixing toolkits will cause inconsistencies - that is the way.
They are in the extra repo. BTW i have neither installed. After applying the config file (which remedied baobab, gnome-logs and pamac), the only app not following theme (i have a mix of 2 very similar dark themes, because matcha-dark-se in not available in kvantum) is KDE connect. But for example qbittorent as a qt app is totally fine.
XFCE is a GTK based DE, in order to have themes applied to KDE apps properly you need to have a mechanism of doing so. Kvantum is a KDE theme, in order to apply it to KDE apps in a GTK enviroment, you need to use Qgnomeplatform-qt5 and Qgnomeplatform-qt6. Now, Qgnomeplatform-gtk6 seems to work very well with QT6 apps, Qgnomeplatform-qt5 has some issues, this is why it is better to use QT5CT for QT5 aspplications.
If you install Qgnomeplatform-qt6 and QT5CT you can get a good consistant theme look throughout your system.
You can install various KDE themes and then use QT5CT to apply them.
Thanks for the answers. But I had my own theme in mind…
I created it because I do not like flat design.
But I will look into Qgnomeplatform, I’ve never heard of it. Currently I am using qt5-styleplugins (which have to be recompiled whenever the qt5 libs change) and qt6gtk2 since my theme has a gtk2 theme.
But that is hacking, since my users are not power users, but people with little knowledge nor money to buy the the latest windoze hardware. They can’t compile code. So I’m trying to find some “translator” from GTK (on XFCE) for qt5 and qt6 apps. I would’ve expected from manjaro that they either do not add QT apps or provide sufficient support for both “worlds” to look alike.
qgnomeplatform is the “translator” you are looking for. It is the preferred method for making the two tool kits look somewhat the same, or at least as best as you can.
The Theme you linked is a GTK theme, you can’t apply a GTK theme to a QT app. There must be a a theme or library of some kind that can be applied to the QT apps. For example, there is the adwaita gtk theme and there is the adwaita-qt5/qt6 theme. These three themes together will make most apps look very similar in a GTK based DE.
Manjaro is not responsible for making sure these things exist, they merely provide the tools that are available.
Now, you chose XFCE, a very good DE, but it aims and is considered a “light weight” DE, so you are not going to have many extras installed by default. Manjaro Gnome and Manjaro KDE Plasma come with many more tools pre-installed, maybe give those two a try and see if the fit your needs. Or maybe Manjaro Cinnamon?
Manjaro Xfce includes QT theme from kvantum-theme-matcha. Users wanting QT themes for Maia & Breath can install ‘kvantum-manjaro’
(package also includes KvLibadwaitaMaia themes)
Manjaro Cinnamon includes kvantum, kvantum-manjaro and qtct5 for QT theme support
No Manjaro ISOs include qgnomeplatform-qt* packages at the moment so I suspect they are only preferred for the Cinnamon re-spin
Third party theme Gradient-black claims to support Gtk2, Gtk3 and Gtk4 but not QT
I cannot offer help with creating a third-party QT theme except to mention that @philm maintains kvantum-theme-matcha and @yochannan maintains kvantum-manjaro. They should be able to help you create a KvGradient-black.kconfig QT theme
Ok, I found a solution that should be used by manjaro. To remove the constraints of GTK’s libadwaita there is a libadwaita-without-adwaita-git in AUR. It will provide the freedom of themes.