Description: "Your first-class visual companion for your personal desktop computer."
DesktopPal97 is a rebellious yet classic fantasy desktop imitating the 90s aesthetic. It is a full-featured GTK-3 theme for XFCE4 (with partial GTK-4 support and a GTK-2 fallback), including an XFWM4 theme, an XFCE-notify theme, an XFSM (logout dialog) theme, a customized LightDM (login & lockscreen) theme, a Kvantum theme for Qt apps, and more.
DesktopPal97 takes its inspiration from the desktop GUIs from the 1990s and 2000s, and it uses the 256-color VGA palette.
How to install - Put the "DesktopPal97" folder into your "~/.themes" directory. - Copy the "hicolor" subfolder (or its contents if it already exists) into your "~/.icons" directory. - Open xfce4-appearance-settings and select the DesktopPal97 GTK theme. - Open xfwm4-settings and select the DesktopPal97 XFWM4 theme. - Open xfce4-notifyd-config (Notifications), choose Appearance and select the DesktopPal97 theme. - To make your theme available globally, copy your files to "/usr/share/themes/" and "/usr/share/icons/" (same applies to cursor theme). This can be achieved in Terminal by typing: sudo cp -r '/home/your_user_name/.themes/DesktopPal97' '/usr/share/themes'. This is required if you would like to use the theme for the LightDM Greeter as well. - Open LightDM GTK+ Greeter settings and select the DesktopPal97 LightDM theme. To make your background available in LightDM, copy the image file to "usr/share/backgrounds" and choose this file in the LightDM GTK+ Greeter settings. - You can find nice wooden backgrounds for your XFCE panel in the "xfpanel" subfolder. (The width of the right-side panel is 48 pixel in the screenshot. It is set to Deskbar mode, it has 2 lines and uses the docklike XFCE panel plugin.) - You can find a DesktopPal97 icon for the applications menu button or the Whiskermenu button in the "xfpanel" subfolder ("start.png"). - You can find wallpapers in the "backgrounds" subfolder.
Other details - Icon theme: Elementary XFCE Darker - Font: Noto Sans (Xubuntu default) - Cursor theme: Simp1e - Wallpaper: Balaton (you can find it in the "backgrounds" folder)
Hacks & extra customizations - How to use Kvantum theme: 1. Install qt5ct and Kvantum manager. 2. Install the DesktopPal97 Kvantum theme by selecting the "kvantum" subfolder that can be found in your "DesktopPal97" directory. 3. Copy the "DesktopPal97.conf" file from the "qt5ct" subfolder to "~/.config/qt5ct/colors". 4. Open qt5ct and select Kvantum as the style of the Qt apps in your system, select DesktopPal97 as the custom palette. 5. Add (or change) the following line in the "etc/environment" file (or "etc/X11/Xsession.d/56xubuntu-session" on Xubuntu): export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct - Use GTK-2 fallback for the Flatpak version of GIMP: copy the "gtkrc" file from the "gtk-2.0" subfolder to the following directory: "/var/lib/flatpak/app/org.gimp.GIMP/x86_64/stable/active/files/share/gimp/2.0/themes/DesktopPal97" (requires root access) - A config file for skippy-xd can be found in the "skippy-xd" subfolder. Copy this folder to the "~/.config" directory. Note that you have to modify the path of the background image in the "skippy-xd.rc" file. - Avoid disappearing scrollbars: add (or change) the following line in the "etc/environment" file (or "etc/X11/Xsession.d/56xubuntu-session" file for Xubuntu users): export GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 - To make Inkscape a bit more consistent, copy the "inkscape/style.css" file to the "~/.config/inkscape/ui" directory.Last changelog:
Version 1.95
- A few changes were made to maintain compatibility with XFCE 4.20 (Thunar lost its unique look, but this sacrifice had to be made). - More GTK4 fixes. Let me know in the comments if there are any problems. Any contributions are welcome (Gnome Web looks quite strange, for example. I don't have the capacity to fix it. It is a pain to style GTK4...).
Thank you very much! You can try to change scaling in Settings > Appearance > Settings > Window scaling. Or you can also try to change the Display settings. Another way is to create a new xfwm4 theme based on the current one, but it requires some work.
Ratings & Comments
16 Comments
10 Just like the old times game! love it!
Thank you for your kind comment!
10 I wish it was a real app, aww :') - Else that's a really great theme!
Thank you for the nice feedback! :)
10 I love it!
Thank you! :)
It looks great! How to adapt to 4K? windows title is very narrow at 4k
Thank you very much! You can try to change scaling in Settings > Appearance > Settings > Window scaling. Or you can also try to change the Display settings. Another way is to create a new xfwm4 theme based on the current one, but it requires some work.
9 Excellent retro feeling
Thank you! Köszönöm! :)
10 Love the retro look
Thank you! :)
10 One word: awesome!
Thank you very much! Köszönöm szépen! :)
10 Worked like a charm on xfce and have the look very similar to CDE. With the delft icon pack the result is awesome. congrats
Thank you very much for your kind feedback!