How To Install The Oranchelo Icon Theme On Linux
In need of a modern icon theme with a twist? Introducing the Oranchelo icon theme. It’s a flat style-icon theme with a heavy focus on simplicity and clean design.
To be clear, Oranchelo isn’t the first “flat” set of icons to show up on Linux. That said, the design is refreshingly simple, unique to Linux, and doesn’t try to be a complete carbon copy of what is seen on Android.
SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.
Install Oranchelo Icon Theme
Getting the Oranchelo theme on Linux isn’t difficult, but depending on what you use, it may be easier or harder to install. Officially, the theme supports Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora and OpenSUSE with downloadable packages for quick installation. However, it doesn’t support every Linux distribution out there, so some users may need to follow the “generic instructions” part of the guide.
Ubuntu
Like many others, the Oranchelo icon theme has a PPA for Ubuntu users. Having a PPA makes installation a breeze. Better yet, it also means that Ubuntu users will get constant, steady updates to the theme with no effort.
Note: having issues with the PPA on your version of Ubuntu? Follow the Debian instructions!
Installing this PPA is simple, and it starts by opening up a terminal and using the add-apt-repository command.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oranchelo/oranchelo-icon-theme
Adding PPAs to Ubuntu is a multi-step process. Running add-apt-repository will add the software source to Ubuntu, but won’t activate it. Instead, users need to manually activate it with the update command. Update refreshes all software sources on Ubuntu. In Oranchelo’s case, it sets up a brand-new cache file that the system can use to find software through.
sudo apt update
The last step in the installation process for Oranchelo on Ubuntu is to use the install command. Running this will automatically download the latest set of Oranchelo icons and put them in the correct place on the system.
sudo apt install oranchelo-icon-theme
Debian
Debian, unfortunately, doesn’t have a software source for easy installation like Ubuntu does. Luckily, users on Debian looking to get Oranchelo can manually download the Ubuntu package.
cd ~/Downloads wget https://launchpad.net/~oranchelo/+archive/ubuntu/oranchelo-icon-theme/+files/oranchelo-icon-theme_0.7.7.1~ubuntu18.04.1_all.deb -O oranchelo-icon-theme.deb
Once the icon theme DEB package is done downloading use the dpkg packaging tool to install it in Debian:
sudo dpkg -i oranchelo-icon-theme.deb
Arch Linux
Oranchelo doesn’t have an official icon theme package in the main software sources, so installation on Arch Linux requires downloading an AUR package.
Open up a terminal and use the Pacman packaging tool to sync the latest version of Git.
sudo pacman -S git
Now that Git is working on your Arch Linux PC, it’s possible to use it to clone the latest Oranchelo icon theme AUR snapshot.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/oranchelo-icon-theme-git.git
Next, move the terminal into the Oranchelo sources folder and execute the build command.
Note: if you run into trouble installing Oranchelo from the AUR, some dependencies may not be installed correctly. Check out the official Oranchelo page to learn more.
cd oranchelo-icon-theme-git
Lastly, execute makepkg and install the icons on your Arch Linux PC:
makepkg -si
Fedora
The Oranchelo developer has an RPM available for Fedora users. Officially, the RPM files are for Fedora 24 and 25, but they should work on every version of the operating system with no issues.
To get the RPM file, open up a terminal and use the wget command to download.
wget https://github.com/OrancheloTeam/oranchelo-icon-theme/releases/download/v0.7.4.4/oranchelo-icon-theme-0.7.4.4-1.fc27.noarch.rpm
After downloading the RPM package, install Oranchelo using the DNF package manager.
sudo dnf install oranchelo-icon-theme-0.7.4.4-1.fc27.noarch.rpm -y
OpenSUSE
Thanks to the Oranchelo icon team making RPMs available for Fedora, OpenSUSE users benefit as well. To install the Oranchelo icon pack on OpenSUSE, grab it with wget then, install it to the system with Zypper.
wget https://github.com/OrancheloTeam/oranchelo-icon-theme/releases/download/v0.7.4.4/oranchelo-icon-theme-0.7.4.4-1.fc27.noarch.rpm sudo zypper install oranchelo-icon-theme-0.7.4.4-1.fc27.noarch.rpm
Generic Linux
Getting the Oranchelo icon theme on a Linux distribution that doesn’t have official support involves using Git. Sadly, many Linux distributions do not have the Git tool ready to use out of the box, so users need to install it manually.
Installing the Git tool is quite easy, as many distributions have it in their official software sources. Get it by opening up a terminal and searching the package manager for “git”.
Then, use the tool to clone the latest Oranchelo source code.
git clone https://github.com/OrancheloTeam/oranchelo-icon-theme.git
CD into the newly downloaded oranchelo-icon-theme folder.
At this point, installation can begin. Follow the steps below to get it working on your Linux distribution.
Compile From Source
Compiling Oranchelo from source is very straightforward, as no programs or dependencies need to be installed. Just run the make install command to get it going on your system!
sudo make install
When the theme is installed, be sure to remove the sources folder:
rm -rf ~/oranchelo-icon-theme
Installation script
Compiling isn’t for everyone, so the Oranchelo icon team includes an automatic installation script to get the icons working. To install this way, follow the steps below:
Step one: update the script’s permissions so that it is executable.
sudo chmod +x oranchelo-installer.sh
Step two: run the installation script.
./oranchelo-installer.sh
Step three: remove the sources folder.
rm -rf ~/oranchelo-icon-theme
Activate Oranchelo
Not sure how to activate the Oranchelo icon theme? Open up your settings, look for “Appearance,” and select it under the “icons” area of your desktop environment. If you’re having issues figuring out how to enable it, check out one of the links in the list below! Each of them explain in-depth how to customize the Linux desktop (including enabling icon themes.)
