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I have installed debian 9 with xfce and compiz. How can I change the theme of gtk-window-decorator?

If I understand correctly gtk-window-decorator uses metacity's configuration. So far I have my ~/.themes directory with a few entries in it but I don't know how to activate them. All I could find with search engines is that I should use gnome-tweak-tool but that doesn't work, because it is for gnome3. I also thought of using gconf-editor and somehow find the key for the current theme's name but it is completely empty.

I am not married to gtk-window-decorator, I would use emerald if I could but that does not compile.

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3 Answers 3

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Hmm, there might be multiple answers that depends on metacity and compiz versions you have... Please try to change theme using this command:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme "THEME_NAME"

UPDATE 1:
You need to install libmetacity! gtk-window-decorator use library from metacity to draw window decorations. Otherwise gtk-window-decorator use default / builtin cairo theme.

UPDATE 2:
Oh, it seems that gtk-window-decorator is built without metacity. Debian should update compiz or simply add patches that adds support for libmetacity 3.22.

UPDATE 3:
For everyone! If you have any problems changing theme in gtk-window-decorator and/or metacity please read this post.

UPDATE 4:
Compiz in debian currently needs 4091 - 4094 and 4102 revisions from here to enable Metacity theme support. Remove -DBUILD_METACITY=OFF and then rebuild when required revisions are added.

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  • Unfortunately it has no effect. If I read it back using gsettings get ... it retains the value but compiz does not care about it. I don't actually have metacity installed, gtk-window-decorator reads metacity settings. This is compiz 0.9.13.0 from the debian 9 repo.
    – soger
    Jun 26, 2017 at 9:49
  • Please post output of echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP.
    – muktupavels
    Jun 26, 2017 at 9:53
  • it says: XFCE
    – soger
    Jun 26, 2017 at 14:19
  • Just to be sure I've installed libmetacity1 but no change.
    – soger
    Jun 26, 2017 at 14:25
  • You need to rebuild compiz with metacity theme support enabled, otherwise it will not work, sorry!
    – muktupavels
    Jun 26, 2017 at 15:01
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I managed to compile Emerald which also provides nice decoration. Download it from here: https://github.com/compiz-reloaded/emerald

Under Debian, the dependencies are provided by these packages: libdecoration0-dev libwnck-3-dev intltool

Run this command in the unzipped Emerald directory to compile it, you may need to run it as root: ./autogen.sh && ./configure --prefix /usr && make && make install

Then set Emerald as the window decorator with emerald --replace. For those who want to use Metacity, see the other response from muktupavels.

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I'm still new and don't know a whole lot about Linux but I change my window decorations in Window Manager.

If Window Manager works for you then you also need to move all of your window decorations to /usr/share/themes in order to use them in Window Manager.

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