How To Install The Moka Icon Theme On Linux

The Moka icon theme is a simplistic, basic icon theme that centers around minimalist design. It’s very nice looking and is by far one of the best icon themes out there. Installing the Moka icon theme is surprisingly easy, thanks to the developer providing native, downloadable package files for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and even Arch Linux!

SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu users looking to get the Moka icon theme working can install it in multiple ways, however, the best way to go is by adding the official PPA. To add the Moka PPA, open up a terminal and enter the following command below:

sudo add-apt-repository -u ppa:snwh/ppa

Next, use the apt update command to refresh Ubuntu’s software sources.

sudo apt update

Finally, install the Moka icon theme and all of its assets.

sudo apt install moka-icon-theme faba-icon-theme faba-mono-icons

Debian

Getting Moka for Debian? Start out by grabbing the latest DEB package archives from the official website, via wget.

wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/375789510/moka-icon-theme_5.4.519-201806241625~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb
wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/375793783/faba-icon-theme_4.3.317-201806241721~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb
wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/373757993/faba-mono-icons_4.4.102-201604301531~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb

With all the icon DEB package files on your Debian PC, it’s safe to start the installation. In the terminal, use the dpkg command to install everything.

sudo dpkg -i moka-icon-theme_5.4.519-201806241625~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb faba-icon-theme_4.3.317-201806241721~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb faba-mono-icons_4.4.102-201604301531~daily~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb

Arch Linux

Moka is available on the Arch User Repository. To start the installation on Arch Linux, you’ll first need to install the latest version of the Git development tool. This tool is easy to install on Arch, thanks to the Pacman package manager tool.

sudo pacman -S git

Now that Git is installed, use it to grab the latest version of the Moka AUR snapshot, and the Faba AUR snapshot.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/faba-icon-theme-git.git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/moka-icon-theme-git.git

Using CD and makepkg, build and install both Moka and Faba.

cd faba-icon-theme-git

makepkg -si 

..

cd moka-icon-theme-git

makepkg -si

..

Running the makepkg command should successfully generate and install both Moka, as well as the Faba icons that it depends on for background assets. When the installation is complete, Moka should be available in the appearance settings for your Arch Linux PC in the icons section!

Fedora

Fedora users can easily install the Moka icon theme thanks to an RPM file readily available on the developer’s website. Downloading the Moka RPM file is easy, thanks to the wget downloading tool. In the terminal, grab both Moka and Faba:

cd ~/Downloads

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/Fedora_25/noarch/moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.2.noarch.rpm

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/Fedora_25/noarch/faba-icon-theme-4.1.git+1464555711.d0ea1e6-6.2.noarch.rpm

Install Moka onto Fedora Linux with the DNF packaging tool:

sudo dnf install moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.2.noarch.rpm faba-icon-theme-4.1.git+1464555711.d0ea1e6-6.2.noarch.rpm -y

OpenSUSE

Thanks to the OBS, Moka is available for easy installation on many versions of OpenSUSE. Head over to the official OBS page for Moka. Once there, click on the SUSE logo, and follow the directions that correspond to your version of the operating system.

Alternatively, install Moka on SUSE via wget and zypper in the command-line.

cd ~/Downloads

Tumbleweed

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/noarch/moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.12.noarch.rpm -O moka-icon-theme.noarch.rpm

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/src/moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.12.src.rpm -O moka-icon-theme.src.rpm

LEAP

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/noarch/moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.1.noarch.rpm -O moka-icon-theme.noarch.rpm

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/snwh:/moka/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/src/moka-icon-theme-5.3.git+1475513102.0566904-8.1.src.rpm -O moka-icon-theme.src.rpm

sudo zypper install moka-icon-theme.noarch.rpm moka-icon-theme.src.rpm

Generic Linux

Before installing the Moka icon theme on a Linux distribution that doesn’t have official support, you’ll need to install several dependencies. Specifically, you’ll need to install “git,” “mercurial”, and “Ninja”. These dependencies can easily be found in the software repositories on most Linux distributions.

When all dependencies are satisfied, use the Git program to download the latest version of Moka to your Linux PC.

git clone https://github.com/snwh/moka-icon-theme.git

Start the building process by running the following Meson command.

meson "build" --prefix=/usr

Finally, install the icon theme with:

sudo ninja -C "build" install

Activate Moka

With Moka installed on Linux, it’s ready to be activated as the system’s main icon theme. To do this, open up “system settings,” and search for “appearance,” or “icons”. In the icon menu, select the “Moka” option, and apply it. Doing so should instantly set your default icon theme on Linux to Moka.

Still can’t figure it out? Do check out our list of customization articles for the Linux desktop. In each one, from Gnome Shell all the way to KDE Plasma 5, we go over in detail exactly how to apply things like icon themes, GTK themes, window manager tweaks, and more!