How to install the OieIcons icon theme on Linux
OieIcons is a fun modification of the KDE Breeze icon theme, mixed in with Numix, Papirus, and others. It’s a beautiful icon theme to use on KDE Plasma 5, Gnome Shell, or other desktops if you’re looking for something neat and fresh. Here’s how to install it on your system.
Get Git on Linux
The OieIcons icon theme is hosted on Opencode. To interact with this website, you must use the Git application. To use the app, it needs to be installed. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, follow the command-line instructions that correspond with your Linux operating system to get
Ubuntu
sudo apt install git
Debian
sudo apt-get install git
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S git
Fedora
sudo dnf install git
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install git
Generic Linux
If you need to install the Git application on a Linux operating system that was not covered in this post, please go over to Pkgs.org to get your copy of the program. Or, download the source code here to get it working on your system.
Download OieIcons icon theme
The OieIcons theme is hosted on Opencode.net, a website that developers can use for source control. It is identical to GitHub, in that if you want to download files from it, you must use the git clone command. So, use the following command below to get your copy of OieIcons.
git clone https://www.opencode.net/adhe/oieicons.git
The downloading process will not take long. When everything is done, everything will be in the “oieicons” directory. You can run the ls command below to verify all of the files are there.
ls oieicons
If the ls command shows that all files are in the “oieicons” directory, move on to the next step in the installation process. Otherwise, re-run the git clone command and try again.
Install OieIcons icon theme
Installing icons on Linux can be done in two ways. The first way is known as “single-user,” as only one person will have access to the icon theme. The second way is called “system-wide,” which means that every user on the system can access it. In this guide, we’ll go over both.
Single-user
To install the OieIcons theme on your Linux PC, you must first create a new directory in your home folder with the name of “.icons”. To create this new folder, use the mkdir command below.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
After creating the new folder, you can verify that it is in the home directory with the ls -a command below.
ls -a
When you’ve verified that the new “.icons” folder is in your home directory, it’s time to start the installation of OieIcons. Using the mv command, place the “oieicons” folder into the “.icons” folder you just made.
mv oieicons/OieIcons/ ~/.icons/
Once the files are moved into the “.icons” folder, you can verify that the installation was successful by using the ls command and the grep pipe.
ls ~/.icons | grep "oieicons"
Running the ls command above along with grep will print out “oieicons” if it was indeed installed correctly. If it wasn’t, follow the installation instructions again, as something may have gone wrong.
System-wide
Installing the OieIcon theme on Linux in system-wide mode means directly interacting with the system directory on your PC. To gain access to this folder, you must log in with the Root account. Using the sudo -s command, log in as root.
sudo -s
After logging into the terminal as the root user, the icon theme installation can finally begin. Using the mv command, place the “OieIcons” folder into the “/usr/share/icons/” directory.
mv oieicons/OieIcons/ /usr/share/icons/
Once the icon files have been moved to the “/usr/share/icons/” directory, you can verify that the installation was successful by running the ls command along with the grep pipe.
ls /usr/share/icons/ | grep oieicons
The command above will filter through the icons directory for the OieIcon theme. If the files are correctly installed, it will show “oieicons” in the results. If nothing comes up, the installation has failed, and you must follow the instructions again, as something may have gone wrong during the setup process.
Enable OieIcons icon theme on Linux
OieIcons is installed on your Linux PC, but it is not enabled as the default icon theme. You must manually enable OieIcons on your system for it to be your icon theme.
Enabling the OieIcons theme on the Linux desktop is easy. To do it, start by opening up “System Settings.” Once open, look through for “Icons” or “Appearance.” Then, change the current icon theme to “OieIcons.” It should instantly apply to your desktop environment.
Need help getting the OieIcons working on your Linux desktop environments? Check out our list below for help applying icon themes.
