So recently I picked up a new laptop and did my usual linux + xfce install on it, and while my usual goto theme is Arc theme this time I wanted to do a full gruv theme, and whlie there are some out there. They all felt... well... a little lacking in some form or another. Now I've never done a theme before for any window manager and didn't really want to start from scratch as there is so much to love about the Arc theme I figured I could use it as a jumping off point.

Gruv Xfce

Gruv All The Things!

So here it is https://github.com/jnewing/xfce-gruv

Gruv Theme

Gruv is a flat theme with transparent elements for GTK 3 which supports GTK 3 and Xfce.

This theme is just a hack of Arc Theme. You should really go check that out here: he really did all the hard work. I just ripped it off to make a Gruv colourway of this theme as I kinda like everything Gruv.

Installation

To build the theme the follwing packages are required

autoconf
automake
pkg-config or pkgconfig for Fedora
libgtk-3-dev for Debian based distros or gtk3-devel for RPM based distros
git to clone the source directory

Note: For distributions which don't ship separate development packages, just the GTK 3 package is needed instead of the -dev packages.

For the theme to function properly, install the following

GNOME Shell 3.14 - 3.24, GTK 3.14 - 3.22
The gnome-themes-standard package
The murrine engine. This has different names depending on the distro.
- gtk-engine-murrine (Arch Linux)
- gtk2-engines-murrine (Debian, Ubuntu, elementary OS)
- gtk-murrine-engine (Fedora)
- gtk2-engine-murrine (openSUSE)
- gtk-engines-murrine (Gentoo)

Install the theme with the following commands

1. Get the source

Clone the git repository with

git clone https://github.com/jnewing/xfce-gruv

2. Build and install the theme

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
sudo make install

Other options to pass to autogen.sh are

--disable-transparency     disable transparency in the GTK3 theme
--disable-gnome-shell      disable GNOME Shell support
--disable-gtk3             disable GTK3 support
--disable-xfwm             disable XFWM support

--with-gnome=<version>     build the theme for a specific GNOME version (3.14, 3.16, 3.18, 3.20, 3.22)
                            Note 1: Normally the correct version is detected automatically and this
                            option should not be needed.
                            Note 2: For GNOME 3.24, use --with-gnome-version=3.22
                            (this works for now, the build system will be improved in the future)

After the installation is complete the theme can be activated with gnome-tweak-tool or a similar program by selecting Gruv as Window/GTK+ theme and Gruv as GNOME Shell/Cinnamon theme.

If the --disable-transparency option was used, the theme will be installed as Gruv-solid.

Uninstall

Run

sudo make uninstall

from the cloned git repository, or

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/themes/Gruv

Xfce Gruv Theme