gnome-tweak not having themes section in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

miranm

Hey there,

Just finished the module 0.5 on GUI and I faced something I didn't understand about the gnome-tweaks. I installed it using apt install, as it did not natively exist . When I open it using gnome-tweaks command in the Appearance section, there is not a themes section. This is the case while the course material has a different screenshot of this.

Thanks.

KevinCSmallwood

Sorry that you found one of the changed aspects in Gnome and Linux. The one thing constant in FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) is change! ;-) The gnome desktop has been changing in the past few years, and this is one of them. I am currently involved with updating this course content to reflect Ubuntu 24.04 and CentOS 9 (moving targets at best!). Changing the theme and gnome-tweaks has changed. You are correct; there is no longer a "themes section." Now under
"gnome-tweaks->Appearance", you can make some changes under "Styles" for the Cursor, Icons and Legacy Applications. No more themes. This may well change again in the future. Sorry for this point of confusion but thank you for pointing this out (in case I had not caught it in my updating efforts).

KevinCSmallwood

Just for more detail, I added in the exercise text (because some students may still be using older version of Gnome):

"In recent versions of Gnome, you need to use the gnome-tweaks tool and scroll to Appearance where you can only change a few items (Cursor, Icons and Legacy Apps); themes no longer exist as they used to. This may change, again, in the future. The closest way to get a unified look & feel is to define your theme in your ".profile" at your home directory, for example:

export GTK_THEME="Gradient-black-DPI24-46"

Replace “Gradient-black-DPI24-46,” for example, with the name of your preferred theme as seen from the drop-down menu for the Cursor, Icons or Legacy Apps."

Again, I hope this clarifies things. The main take-away is that things change. Usually just minor things. Not certain why this changed, and I have no idea if it will change in the future to, once again, allow a global theme.

miranm

Thank you so much for your elaborate and to the point explanation.