Gtk theme won't apply in Fluxbox

Question

I installed my Arch Linux with Gnome 3 and Fluxbox on top of it, and I use Fluxbox as the default, but I have this weird problem that I can't manage to fix. I set my theme for Fluxbox and that is working perfectly. I set the gtk2 theme and it is not working (well partially I right click in Chromium and I see the styling). However, when I open nautilus or gnome-terminal, or any other window that uses gtk for styling doesn't apply. Here is the screenshot (notice in the third picture, the menu looks like an X WM menu):

I tried that in my gnome session and it works without a problem (in fallback mode). I tried one of those gtk-theme changer and it says that the theme, that i want, is set but it is only seen in chromium. It is all grey and old (Like win98 :D) Note : I tried to run gnome-settings-daemon in my terminal and it says "command not found" but when i check this package with pacman : it says [installed]

Answer 1

I had the same issue a while ago: it's because you're using Gnome 3! Gnome 3 uses GTK3 not GTK2, so all those awesome themes now need to be completely reworked. The most difficult problem I ran in to was locating a complete theme that included GTK2+GTK3.

To set your theme for GTK3, while not running the GNOME settings daemon, create this file.

~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

Here is an example from my current config.

[Settings]
gtk-theme-name = Elegant_Brit
gtk-fallback-icon-theme = areao43
gtk-font-name = Gill Sans Std 10

The syntax must be exact, any extra quoting throws it off.

I actually just noticed, you said you are running the gnome-settings-daemon. People on other forums, have had trouble in certain distros (Arch specifically). The transition times in the F/OSS world are always unforgiving. Personally, I run a plain Openbox session and use nautilus. I found ditching the GNOME config tools, and just doing the settings myself, was actually not difficult.

All the guides for pure Openbox are relevant, plus this new GTK3 information. The Arch wiki is actually very helpful, I'm a Debian guy and use it all the time.

Chromium works because it approximates your current GTK2 theme. It actually contains its own cross platform native widget toolkit.

Answer 2

If that's wpa_gui in the third screenshot, don't expect it to follow GTK theming; it's a Qt application.