How to install the Simply Circles icon theme on Linux
Simply Circles is a monochromatic icon theme for all Linux desktop environments. It sports a basic, circular design and is perfect for those who love the minimalistic look. If you’re interested in using Simply Circles, follow along with this guide!
Downloading Simply Circles
To get your hands on the latest Simply Circles icon theme, you must visit Pling.com. Click here to head over to the Simply Circles page. Then, once on the SimplyCircles page, find the “Files” tab, and click on it with the mouse.
After accessing the “Files” tab, locate “Simply_Circles_Icons.tar.xz” and click on the button in the “DL” column. Upon clicking on the button in the “DL” column, you will see a pop-up message on the screen. This pop-up message is a download link. Select it to download the latest Simply Circles icon theme to your Linux PC.
Extracting Simply Circles
The Simply Circles icon theme cannot be installed on your Linux system in the state that it was downloaded. The reason that it cannot be used is that Simply Circles is distributed in a TarXZ archive. Icon theme files must be extracted from TarXZ archives to work.
To extract the Simply Circle TarXZ archive on your Linux PC, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the command-line instructions outlined below.
First, move into the “Downloads” directory with the CD command. The terminal window must be in this folder to extract the Simply Circles archive.
cd ~/Downloads
Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, extraction can begin. Using the tar xvf command to take the theme files out of the “Simply_Circles_Icons.tar.xz” archive.
tar xvf Simply_Circles_Icons.tar.xz
Upon extracting the Simply Circles icon archive, you will see six new folders in the “Downloads” directory. These six folders are different variations of the Simply Circles icon theme.
Installing Simply Circles
The Simply Circles icon theme is installable on any Linux desktop environment that allows users to customize their icon themes. There are two ways of installing the Simply Circles icon theme on Linux. The first method of installation is known as “single-user.” This type of installation makes it so that only the person that installed Simply Circles has access to it. The second type of installation is “system-wide.” System-wide makes it so that all users on the Linux PC have access to the icon theme no matter what. In this guide, we’ll go over both methods of installation.
Single-user
To install the Simply Circles icon theme as a single-user, start by launching a terminal window. Then, with the terminal window open, use the mkdir command to create a new folder with the name of “.icons.” The “.icons” folder will hold all icon theme files, including Simply Circles.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
After creating the new “.icons” folder, move the terminal session into the “Downloads” directory using the CD command.
cd ~/Downloads
Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, make use of the mv command to install the Simply Circles icon themes into the newly created “.icons” folder in your home directory.
mv Simply-*-Circles ~/.icons
After executing the mv command, run ls on the “.icons” folder to make sure that the folders were successfully installed.
ls ~/.icons | grep Simply
System-wide
To install the Simply Circles icon theme in system-wide mode, do the following. First, open up a terminal window. Then, use the CD command to move into the “Downloads” directory, as the “Downloads” directory has the Simply Circles icon theme files.
cd ~/Downloads
Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, you will need to elevate the permissions of the terminal session from your current user to the root user. Why? Installing Simply Circles in system-wide mode means you must have read/write access to the /usr/share/icons/ directory. Only root has that kind of permissions.
To log into the root account, make use of the sudo -s command. It allows you to elevate the permissions of the terminal without leaving the directory you are in.
sudo -s
With the terminal shell in root mode, use the mv command to install the icon theme files system-wide.
mv Simply-*-Circles /usr/share/icons/
When the installation is complete, run the ls command to confirm the files are in the correct place.
ls /usr/share/themes/ | grep Simply
Enabling Simply Circles
Although the Simply Circles icon theme is set up on your Linux PC, you will not be able to use it, as it is not the default icon theme for your Linux desktop environment.
To change the default icon theme to Simply Circles, open up the “Settings” app. Then, from there, look for “Icons” or “Appearance” and click “Simply Circles” on the list.
Are you having issues changing the default icon theme on your Linux desktop environment to Simply Circles? We can help! Check out the links below! They go over how to change the default icon theme and will help you get Simply Circles working!
