How To Customize Numix Themes On Linux With OOMOX
Materia and Numix are popular GTK themes for the Linux desktop. They look pretty good, and as a result, many people install these themes. However, not everyone likes the default color schemes of the Numix themes and would want to tweak them. In the past, tweaking a GTK theme like Numix or Materia would be a lot of work. Luckily, you can customize Numix themes easily thanks to Oomox.
With the Oomox program, users can quickly create respins and modifications to their favorite Numix and Materia style themes. Best of all, the program lets users export and save them for use on any Linux PC!
Install Oomox
To use Oomox, you need to be running Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, or have the latest version of Flatpak running.
Ubuntu/Debian
Oomox is installable on both Ubuntu and Debian Linux in the form of a downloadable package file. To start the installation, go to the Oomox release page and download the latest Deb package. Once downloaded, open up a terminal and follow the instructions to get the program working. Some Debian users may need to change the apt command to apt-get.
Note: Officially, Oomox supports Ubuntu 17.04+ and has no mention of Debian. That said, in our testing, we found out that it works perfectly on Debian 9 Stable.
Installing Oomox on Ubuntu and Debian starts by using the CD command. Use it to move the terminal from the default working directory to the /home/username/Downloads/ directory, where the Oomox package is.
cd ~/Downloads
From here, use the dpkg tool to start the installation process. Depending on your operating system, this Debian package may install as many as eight separate dependencies.
sudo dpkg -i oomox_1.6.0.deb
Running dpkg should take care of everything. However, sometimes things can mess up during installation. These errors happen when the dpkg installer tool can’t find dependencies automatically. Fix this by running the apt install -f command.
sudo apt install -f
Arch Linux
Arch Linux users can install Oomox thanks to a pkgbuild in the AUR. To get started building the program on Arch, you’ll first need to sync the latest Git package to your system with the Pacman tool.
sudo pacman -S git
With Git synced, it’s time to use it to grab the latest Oomox snapshot from the AUR.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/oomox.git
CD into the newly cloned Oomox folder to start the installation process. Please understand that when running makepkg, dependencies don’t always install themselves automatically. If the build fails, you’ll likely need to visit the AUR page and get all the dependency files working manually.
makepkg -si
Fedora
The developer has made Oomox available for Fedora Linux users with the help of a third-party Copr repository. Enable the Copr repo with the dnf package management tool.
sudo dnf copr enable tcg/themes
With the TCG/themes repo up and running, use dnf to install Oomox on Fedora.
sudo dnf install oomox
OpenSUSE
Thanks to the OBS, Oomox is installable for OpenSUSE users. To install the software, visit this page, select your version of OpenSUSE and click the “1-click install” button to begin the installation.
Other Linuxes
Oomox’s entire source code is on Github, so it should be pretty easy to install the software on virtually any Linux distribution. According to the developer of Oomox, the best way to build this software for other Linux distributions is to compile it as a Flatpak package.
Before continuing, please follow our guide and enable the Flatpak universal package system on your Linux distribution. Once activated, install the “git” package on your operating system and follow the instructions below to build and install the Oomox Flatpak.
Note: building Oomox as a Flatpak is experimental. It may not work on your operating system. A good alternative would be to take the source code and run it natively on your operating system.
git clone https://github.com/themix-project/oomox cd oomox cd /packaging/flatpak/ ./flatpak-builder-build.sh ./flatpak-builder-run.sh ./install.sh
Customizing Themes With Oomox
When Oomox opens, it will scan all themes currently installed on your Linux installation. For best results, be sure to install the Numix and Materia themes before doing anything.
To create your theme, look at the left-hand sidebar of the Oomox program. Find a theme preset and click on it to open up the settings for it. There are a lot of different settings to modify in the theme creation area. Let’s start off by changing the “Theme style.”
Look for the drop-down menu next to “theme style” and click it. The two options, as mentioned at the top of the article are “Materia” or “Numix-based.” Decide on one of the two options to change the style. After switching to a new style, move down the list and modify the various color settings. These color settings are the core of the theme and will dictate how it looks on your desktop.
Want to include unique icons with your custom theme? Move on to the “Iconset” portion of the theme creation tool. Find “Icons style” and click the drop-down menu next to it to find the icon type that fits best with the theme. You’ll also be able to change the color of the icon style by clicking on the color icons next to “Light base (folders),” “Light base,” “Medium base” and “Dark stroke.”
The Terminal And Spotify
Along with tweaking the icons and the GTK color scheme, users can modify how their custom GTK theme works with the terminal and the Spotify application.
To modify the terminal, find “Terminal” and tinker with the special settings near this section. For best results with the terminal, find “theme options” and change it to “auto.” Alternatively, click “manual” and modify the individual color schemes.
Customizing the Spotify application theme works roughly the same way as Terminal. Click on the different color options to modify how Spotify looks when using this theme.
Applying The New Theme
Using a custom created theme in the Oomox application is quite easy, and it works like this.
Note: please check our guides on how to apply custom themes if you’re not sure how to do it. We have guides that cover all of the GTK-based Linux desktop environments (Cinnamon, Gnome Shell, LXDE, Mate, Budgie, and XFCE4).
- First, install the overall GTK theme to the system by clicking the “Export theme” button. Clicking this button will install your custom theme in ~/.themes/.
- Open the appearance settings on your Linux distribution and apply the new GTK theme.
- Select “Export icons” to install your custom icon theme to the system. It will go to ~/.icons.
- Click the “Export terminal” button to generate a new theme. Using the Nano editor, select the color scheme code and paste it into the ~/.Xresources file:
nano ~/.Xresources - Finally, click the menu icon on the far right of the program (right next to the minimize button) and select “Apply Spotify theme.”
When you’ve completed all of the steps above, the custom theme created with Oomox should be working correctly!
