Available Themes 2020.04 versus 2024.04 (Solved)

Support & Help Requests
#1

In MATE 2020.04 I am able to get a Desktop configured which appeals to me. The key selection appears to be Themes>Radiant-MATE. There are other choices, eg, Ambient-MATE, Blue Menta, Blue-Submarine, Menta, TraditionalOK. None of these are available in 2024.04

In MATE 2024.04, Themes, I cannot see how to get to Radiant-MATE. Almost all the choices have "Yaru" in them.

How can I get Theme options in 2024.04 to be similar to those available in 2020.04?

[I love the simplicity of MATE and top toolbar with MENU, Apps, Places, System, and the pull down menus]

Theme Option in MATE 2020.04
Theme Option in MATE 2020.041245×823 84.4 KB

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#2

Ambiant and Radiant themes are not in the official repo anymore since 20.10
It is a community effort nowadays.

You might want to install the PPA of @lah7 from here:

And the colour variants:

Many many thanks to Luke for keeping these themes alive.

EDIT: You can install the other themes with these packages:
mate-themes ( Official themes for the MATE desktop )
ubuntu-mate-themes ( GTK themes for Ubuntu MATE )

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#3

Considering how many of us actually prefer those older themes maybe it might make sense to have them imported into our section of the multiverse and for them to become part of the Ubuntu-Mate repos with any needed updates?

#4

The mate-themes and ubuntu-mate-themes packages are both in the jammy universe repository.

The Ambiant/Radiant themes were dropped. Probably due to not having a maintainer.
So as long as Luke keeps the PPA up, we're kind of safe.
Be aware though that, without maintainer, we have to fix incompatibilities and missing icons ourselves.

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#5

thom
Well, many thanks. You unknowingly put me on a process I could handle. I went to the PPA link @lah7, scrolled down and opened an Apr 22 post "Ubuntu Mate 22.04 Theme (solved)". It had a number of posts about copying older theme files into the 2024.04 theme directory.
So the process is simple: themes from an older themes directory into the 2024.4 theme directory. I eliminated duplicates along the way. Retuned and chose Theme>Radiant-Mate, and Theme>Customize Icons>Humanity. And voila, my Desktop now has the appearance I prefer. There were a number of hits against Yaru, and of course I am totally sympathetic.
It seems like it would have been no trouble for the MATE team to have left the older themes in the Theme's directory.
And of course, I will retain the folder with the older theme files to include, as necessary in future upgrades (probably 4 years from now)
mark

4 Likes
#6

Thanks for response. Please see my reply to tkn

#7

I'll keep packaging these themes in that PPA for as long as they're still valuable.

Can confirm they were removed from the official ubuntu-mate-themes package due to not having a maintainer. The last changes under their 'official' tag were:

Even in its new home on GitHub, they're not actively being worked on or improved upon either. I'll review any code changes (pull requests) and take a quick look over any bugs that come through - if any :slight_smile:

Guess they will stand the test of time! They started off as GTK 2 themes forked from Ubuntu's Humanity, then ported over to GTK 3. Now that GTK 3 these days is unlikely to change & break themes, they will probably just work as they are. I don't plan on porting them to GTK 4, so beware that if you use new versions of applications (like as they ship in 24.04), it will probably look like Adwaita (GNOME's default).

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#8

I think the biggest problem with them being put back into ubuntu-mate-themes is that they don't support GTK 4. If they were "official" they'd be expectations for it to just work and look polished with the latest software. Imagine the bug reports piling in! :smiley: :mailbox_with_mail:

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#9

How could they be made to support GTK 4?

Wouldn’t bug reports help with that?

#10

There is an issue open if someone's up for a labour of love. Having someone maintain it would be ideal, or else bug reports would pile up if GTK 4 starts breaking themes.

There is a downside that if the app is built with libadwaita, the theme might not be used anyway. Applications built with that library handles the theming themselves (which so happens to look like the default Adwaita: light or dark) - a bit like how a website dictate its looks.

Porting from GTK 2 to GTK 3 was quite a task, if I remember. Although that work was sponsored and done by someone from Fedora:

(Old blog donation reports are buried in Git history)

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