[xubuntu-users] GUI / GTK visual artifacts after 18.04.2 inline upgrade

[Len Philpot]

On 2/23/19 11:30 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

> You most likely will dislike a new Adwaita theme, that fits to new
> versions of GTK, but for testing purpose, make sure you used Adwaita or
> what ever else is provided by the GNOME default themes.
> 

I've generally not liked Adwaita and many of the other newer themes. The Adwaita
dark theme isn't too bad, though. Most newer themes are, for my taste, too big,
"empty" and honestly not attractive (once again personal preference).


> Almost all of the good old GTK themes are broken nowadays and
> discontinued by upstream, since nearly nobody is willing to follow the
> insane changes that happened even within GTK _dot_ releases.

I'm not a developer but I know what GTK is and does (at a higher level). I've
read a bit of the 'differences of opinion' (to put it mildly) between various
developers concerning the changes in versions after GTK2.

I can't attribute any given visual effect to its source with absolute certainty
but what I've seen and understand as the "GTK3 look" (which may be nothing more
than configurable defaults?) is honestly ugly to me. I don't care for the huge
title bars with embedded buttons, no menus, oversized tabs, large buttons, etc.
If that's due to something else then I'm confused.  :-)  QT (for example) seems
to have maintained a less "touch-influenced" look than newer versions of GTK.
>From a purely visual standpoint the GTK3 GUI looks like a one-night stand
between a Mac and Windows 8 (or is that KDE5?)   :-)  


On Sat, 2019-02-23 at 11:58 -0600, Victor Forberger wrote:

> It looks like you are using a theme that doesn't like your
> appearance/window manager setup. Your themes seem to work with your
> gnome apps like Geary and Evolution but not with the non-gnome apps.
> 
> I would try different themes via via Settings | Appearance | Style and
> Settings | Window Manager | Style.
> 
> - Victor

You're right - I had tried a number of alternate themes but apparently was
(un)lucky enough to just hit on the incompatible ones. A bit more
experimentation exposed several that don't exhibit those artifacts. I think I've
found a compatible compromise. Hopefully it'll continue to work OK.

Thanks for the replies.

-- 
Len Philpot
lphilpot01 at gmail.com
Sent from Evolution on Xubuntu Linux