Using Demeter's GUIs on KDE

Demeter's GUIs use wxperl. On a Linux machine, wxperl is compiled against GTK2. If, like me, you are a KDE user, it can be quite irritating to see that the default GTK2 theme clashes quite dramatically with almost any KDE desktop theme.

KDE and GTK2

If your distribution uses a GNOME desktop environment built on GTK2, then synching themes between KDE and GNOME/GTK applications is relatively easy. You can install the kde-config-gtk package. That's the debian/Ubuntu name. It adds a control panel to KDE's system setting program under "Application Appearance" that allows you to control GTK2 themes and to push KDE font selections onto GTK applications. You can then install something like the QtCurve or oxygen-gtktheme to make your GTK applications (like Athena and friends) look more like everything else on your desktop.

KDE and GTK3

If your computer uses Unity as its default desktop (or anything else based on GTK3), you will find that the trick described above does not work. You will find web pages like this one that explain how to push a KDE-like theme onto GTK3 applications. That works fine for applications (e.g. GEdit) built against GTK3, but it will not work for Athena and friends.

The solution I found was to install some nice GTK2 themes. In debian/Ubuntu, they have names like gtk2-engines-oxygen and so on. You then have to do the GTK2 configuration by hand. This involves putting the following in a file called `~/.gtkrc-2.0

gtk-theme-name=QtCurve
gtk-font-name="Liberation 9"

Save that file, fire up Athena, happiness.