I’ll add my two cents here, as I’ve spent some time with GTK. Sorry for offtopic btw.
Even if Pamac wasn’t designed for GNOME and Phosh, LibAdwaita makes writing GTK apps easier. Yes, it is 100% possible to write pure GTK4, but if widget doesn’t work correctly there is a chance that it will be not fixed like icons in sidebar in GTK3 for example. GTK isn’t perfect.
I understand the consistent look idea, but I have mixed feelings it’s worth the developer’s time, especially if it’s limited. I mean writing workarounds for things that don’t work, and you can’t be sure it will be working after glib update. GNOME use LibAdwaita for desktop, so widgets needs to work or at least they will be fixed faster. It’s a safer environment for developing.
For me, it’s better guinux take care of more important things, than struggling with buttons. You think inconsistency in look is frustrating? Try to write GUI
LibAdwaita is specifically designed for only creating apps for GNOME desktop, but GTK4 will look good on any desktop.
GNOME devs didn’t even want to provide any API to modify that ugly forced Adwaita theme. Each non GNOME desktop is now struggling with that cursed LibAdwaita.
libadwaita is the best thing happened in the Linux ecosystem. This way application developers don’t have to care about theming, as it is fixed to one thing. Sure there will be the dark mode, but this is the only thing they have to take care of and take a look. When colouring is added, adwaita isn’t as bad as everybody thinks it is. pamac was always being designed as a Gnome app and always follows the latest design concepts - period.
If you don’t like it, you may want to use Octopi, which is a pacman UI wrapper.
Not really. There is no one with spare time to handle the task. There was a proposal for System76 devs to take care of development, but instead they start to develop own DE after arguing with GNOME devs
In the opinion of GNOME developers and people who subscribe to their “our way or the highway” attitude to user choice.
I don’t. Many distros whose DE is not specifcally GNOME (like Manjaro) are going to have to make a choice as more GNOME apps get ported to use that library. If that choice is to force libadwaita on non-GNOME DE users then I’ll be looking for a new distro.
Since @philm admitted that pamac gtk4 will not follow Plasma gtk theming because libadwaita, it’s all explained and there is no need to experiment and look further.
I just switch to pamac-gtk3 and forget it.
Thanks all for the comments and helping me to understand and solve this problem.
This is how pamac-gtk3 looks like and how it supposed to look like all along :
As far as i know pamac-gtk is gtk3 based flavour for compatibility reasons and pamac (main) is now gtk4 based, with some minor appearance issues. There is no third or forth version.
pamac is gtk.
And its the only graphical package manager manjaro suggests or supports.
The nomenclature as of now is pamac-gtk and pamac-gtk3, with the second being the ‘classic’ one developed up til now. pamac-gtk is current and gtk-4 and notably libadwaita specifically. While that is probably best integrated with Gnome … its not gnome-specific. Any desktop that can handle gtk4 can handle the new pamac.
It may make sense for the team to decide to include one or the other in certain editions … but it is not a requirement … may be undesirable because of pamac-gtk3s near frozen state … and reflexive of a change that has only recently occurred, with there being no curated big ISO release since then. So if they want to make that change … it isnt so unreasonable for it to just not have happened yet.
Or … you know … skip pamac altogether and use pacman as Arch intended.
(with Octopi as a graphical frontend if you absolutely must)
Any desktop that can handle gtk4 can handle the new pamac
All pure GTK4 apps appear fine on any non GNOME desktop, the problem is only those using LibAdwaita they look ugly due to that embedded Adwaita theme. And GNOME devs stated that any app using LibAdwaita is intended to be used only on GNOME desktop and any bug ticket related to its look on non GNOME desktops will be instantly closed. They refuse to open any door to change LibAdwaita theme and are happy with providing only ability to change the color.
So pamac-gtk is intented to be used only on GNOME desktop and is currently classified as not usable on Plasma or any non GNOME desktop.
Well yeah thats gnome for you.
But … it doesnt mean its not compatible.
Ive added and removed both pamacs multiple times in the last weeks … both run fine on KDE.
(though, yes, of course the gtk4 version is more finnicky with styling … they both ‘work’ as well as pamac ‘works’)
Heck some people dont even manage their GTK+QT theming to match. Not to mention flat-snaps or random electron things.
Styling may be a consideration … but it doesnt seem to stop people from using, for example, etcher.
More like classified as not usable period.
See for example … settings being thrashed and not applied or followed.
Such ailments affect all desktops.
I might have a position on pamac in general … but the most recent release isnt complete for reasons other than the appearance.
It’s not logical and not intuitive for a known distro like Manjaro, that officially supports multiple desktops, to select and approve the usage of a GUI library from a team that refuses to make the final app compatible on all Linux desktops, and I’m sure they will try very hard to even lock their API to prove that their desktop design is the most suitable and the only one appealing in the Linux world.
You must be new here. pamac has always been developed with rather a bit of opinion.
I’m not sure why you would strive to use it if it does not match your own opinion, as pamac itself is unlikely to change. There once was pamac-qt but that was axed. Discover and some others have the ability to manage system packages using packagekit … but you really shouldnt.
I dont see much attractive about any graphical options.
And not to lament either - pacman is wonderful and probably the majority of the reason for my distro decision.
For those that need it … Octopi is outside of manjaro control and is more truly a frontend for pacman … rather than concocting a new way to interact with ALPM. One might also consider it more desktop agnostic as well.
Pamac is a bit different from other random apps. It’s a Manjaro app, in fact it’s THE Manjaro app that is used (rightly or wrongly) to promote the distro’s user-friendliness. So it does seem a very strange decision to use a specifically GNOME-themed GUI library for the main feature of a distro that officially supports KDE and Xfce and GNOME equally.
Now they’ll probably end up having to support both pamac and pamac-gtk or this will be constant sore point, because people who dislike GNOME often dislike it very strongly and vocally
After a cursory bit of tinkering just with testing pamac-manager and this libadwaita-theme-changer, it turns out that it’s actually pretty simple to override libadwaita with theme CSS if one so desires. The theme has to already support GTK4, and have a gtk-4.0 directory with the appropriate .css files inside. It just involves creating a few symlinks to the theme’s .css and assets under ~/.config/gtk-4.0/.
This can be done manually (e.g. ln -s /path/to/theme/file ~/.config/gtk-4.0/), or with the helper python script, libadwaita-theme-changer.
The python script originally didn’t work for OS-packaged themes on Manjaro out of the box, but after I made a few small changes it’s now working. Here’s a preview of setting Matcha-dark-sea theme (Manjaro Sway edition’s default) for pamac-manager GUI:
It will work for you, but will surely break with next LibAdwaita updates, GNOME devs should provide a standard API that provides custom properties attributes that different desktops can safely modify and ensure future compatibility. For now, they have exposed only that accent color modification.
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