Why do some apps look ugly?

**IYY** · April 11th, 2007

The original poster's app is GTK1, so he could find a theme that matches his GTK2 theme's colour, but it will still look blocky and ugly because that's just how the toolkit is made!

finferflu's problem is different, because the applications do use GTK2 themes (the default one, in fact), but just don't use the one that he wants. This could be fixed by making sure that gnome-settings-daemon is running.

**finferflu** · April 11th, 2007

Originally Posted by ComplexNumber

because you quoted me, i'm assuming that you placed the themes in /usr/share/themes instead of the users home directory....but that didn't work.

btw have you installed kde and had it running as you main desktop at any time since the last install? that may be the problem - there is probably a qt setting that the system is still using. i can't rememebr what exactly it is, but it may be a directory called 'default' in the /usr/share/theme directory.

I actually was trying to quote even the previous message, but it didn't work with the quick reply. Anyways I've only tried with the symlink, since I believe it doesn't make any difference, but as I have pointed out, the problem doesn't seem to be related to that.

As for KDE, no, I haven't installed it. The problem seems to be related to bonobo, going by exclusion.

Originally Posted by IYY

finferflu's problem is different, because the applications do use GTK2 themes (the default one, in fact), but just don't use the one that he wants. This could be fixed by making sure that gnome-settings-daemon is running.

Exactly, now the question is: how do I make sure it's running? And as you can see, there is a bunch of problems session-related.

**ComplexNumber** · April 11th, 2007

finferflu
the reason why i mentioned about placing themes in /usr/share/themes is that that's the only place where root can access them. if the theme that you're using is in your home directory, all root apps will be un-themed. just to show you, i've going to move of one my themes(ie vicious apple) from /usr/share/themes to .themes in my home directory. i'm then going to select that theme, then fire up a root app such as synaptic. this is how it looks in the 1st screenshot. notice the difference between gnome-theme-manager and synaptic? just after that, i reverted back to my normal theme. notice how its now themed. the reason being is that, at that time, all my themes were in /usr/share/themes(they still are) except vicious apple.

**finferflu** · April 11th, 2007

Originally Posted by ComplexNumber

finferflu
the reason why i mentioned about placing themes in /usr/share/themes is that that's the only place where root can access them. if the theme that you're using is in your home directory, all root apps will be un-themed. just to show you, i've going to move of one my themes(ie vicious apple) from /usr/share/themes to .themes in my home directory. i'm then going to select that theme, then fire up a root app such as synaptic. this is how it looks in the 1st screenshot. notice the difference between gnome-theme-manager and synaptic? just after that, i reverted back to my normal theme. notice how its now themed. the reason being is that, at that time, all my themes were in /usr/share/themes(they still are) except vicious apple.

Thanks a lot ComplexNumber, you're very patient

You were right, now it's working fine.
So from now on I'll not install a theme through the theme manager. Even though it's kind of weird for new users, I really don't mind untarring and moving the extracted folder to /usr/share/themes.

Thanks a lot!

**ComplexNumber** · April 11th, 2007

glad to help, as always

**Zdravko** · April 13th, 2007

Originally Posted by mech7

Some applications i install have these really old / ugly looking interface elements? Why is this and isn't there a way to let it use the default theme?

Yes, this looks like XMMS. It is a terrible application. I don't know who programmed it, but its GUI is a disaster. How can even such trash enter into Ubuntu?

**Stone123** · April 13th, 2007

Originally Posted by Zdravko

Yes, this looks like XMMS. It is a terrible application. I don't know who programmed it, but its GUI is a disaster. How can even such trash enter into Ubuntu?

I ave heard original writer of xmms (swedish ) cursing over it and calling it somewhat desaster. How it made this far in Linux is a mistery.

**fakie_flip** · May 3rd, 2007

I am having the same problem with this theme.

http://www.gnome-look.org/content/sh...?content=41394

What should I do to get Synaptic and other apps to use the theme?