Use and change GTK themes without the Gnome theme manager

I like fluxbox and use gentoo, so I'd rather avoid compiling Gnome if I can get out of it.

Unfortunately I can't, tried it and while the attempt to switch themes did *something*, it left the theme all messed up with some components getting themed and some not. So, install gnome and follow the instructions below.

If you use gentoo and fluxbox install gtk-theme-switch like this:

emerge x11-themes/gtk-theme-switch

and add the following line to /home/you/.fluxbox/startup

switch2 /usr/share/themes/Simple/ &

That's it. But you need Gnome installed. You can change Simple for whatever theme you want. To install new themes do this:

switch2 -i 'themefile.tar.gz'

If you use some other window manager it's basically the same. Add the line above to some file containing startup/login scripts. The file .xsession in your home directory should work.

If you use another distro, you can either download the source, or if you're using Debian you can do

apt-get install gtk-theme-switch

Comments:

By Anyeos on Aug 20, 2006:

I don't installed gnome (only a little few of libraries) and for set themes I use gtk2_prefs. This only change the look of the widgets not the icons. I don't know how to activate an icon theme. Do you know?
gtk2_prefs is good enought to apply a basis theme in the gtk2rc file I recommend you.

By synss on Oct 31, 2006:

following the info here
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox
I now have Tango icons. And I don't have much of gnome installed.

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