GTK themes without GNOME

Instructions how to apply a theme to GTK apps without having GNOME installed

There are several configuration files for GTK applications.

  • ~/.gtkrc This is for the GTK-1.2 applications
  • ~/.gtkrc-2.0 This one is for GTK+ 2.0 applications
  • /usr/share/themes/Default/gtk/gtkrc This is the global equivalent to the ~/.gtkrc
  • /usr/share/themes/Default/gtk-2.0/gtkrc This is the global equivalent to the ~/.gtkrc-2.0
  • ~/.gimp-1.2/gtkrc The GIMP uses it’s own gtkrc file

If you want to apply themes to GTK applications you have to emerge (or download and install) a GTK theme and then symlink the above mentioned files to the installed gtkrc file.
But you have to choose the appropriate GTK Theme version for the different gtkrc files. E.g. you cannot use a GTK 2.0 gtkrc file for GTK 1.2 applications (which means that you cannot link the ~/.gtkrc file to a GTK 2.0 gtkrc theme), because it wouldn’t work as expected.

If you want to use different fonts for your GTK applications you have to add a line, similar to the following, to your gtkrc files:
font = “-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal–*-80-*-*-*-*-*-*”
You have to add this line after the opening curly brace from “style “default””.

Another problem are the .so and .la files from the GTK themes. By default they are installed under /usr/local/lib/gtk/themes/… But that doesn’t work, so you have to move the whole /usr/local/lib/gtk folder to /usr/lib, because libtool under Gentoo will search only /usr/lib for shared object files.

Another problem are the .so and .la files from the GTK themes. By default they are installed under /usr/local/lib/gtk/themes/… But that doesn’t work, so you have to move the whole /usr/local/lib/gtk folder to /usr/lib, because libtool under Gentoo will search only /usr/lib for shared object files.

Have fun!

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