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Rocket League beta is released for SteamOS. Playing the game on desktop linux are reported to be working quite fine for it's state.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/rocket-league-thoughts-on-linux-initial-port-report-its-also-25-off-right-now.8033
Can someone please help me with installing a theme in Mint 18 Mate?
I downloaded Color-UI that supports a ton of engines including gtk2 and gtk3, as per the instructions I extracted the package (as root) in /usr/share/themes/ but after that were not able to access the folder. Applied new permissions to the folder (like all others) and applied them to all subfolders/items and now what? When I locate the dir and the subdir in "Appearance" program inside gtk2 and gtk3 folder there are only directories with assets and ect. no "themes file" as to what I'm supposed to search in the Appearance app. Inside the gtk2 folder there is some c file that looks like executable program (visible in caja - the file manager in mate, not in appearance app), but inside gtk3 there are none. I've looked to some tutorials and to the theme requirements (I have them all installed by default) and installation instructions, but they all stops at "extract as root in /usr/share/themes/" after which the theme is not registered and accessible in Appearance program. Also a lot of other pre-installed themes are not there too, only the Mint-Y and Mint-X flavours are there. The other pre-installed themes for "metacity" (that, I think, comes also pre-installed with Sarah) are not accessible thru "Appearance" too :(
In summary:
How to install gtk2 themes in Linux MInt 18 Mate edition?
How to install gtk3 themes in Linux MInt 18 Mate edition?
How to install other pre-installed themes in Linux MInt 18 Mate edition?
and
What themes do you prefer - gtk2 or gtk3 or maybe something else?
You should be able to install most themes by simply extracting them into ~/.themes

I haven't got a lot of experience with them because I use Cinnamon & the default Cinnamon theme is good enough for me, but I just downloaded the MATE .iso to have a quick look. Have you tried clicking the "Customise" button and checking the options there after installing the new themes?
I have this Dell i7559 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015PYZ0J6/) and I can't get any of the Ubuntu variants to install or work correctly on it, no matter how much I fiddle with the UEFI settings. I didn't know Dell started hating linux. The Mate linux mint didn't work either, so I have to try another one. But I didn't want Linux Mint because it makes it too easy to use, and I need to refresh some knowledge of linux, but I don't want to get something too complicated. I really want to move to linux full time, I even bought CrossOver.

The irony is I'm using Xubuntu on my main PC at work. I would like an officially supported Ubuntu LXQT. but that's probably not going to happen.
Post edited September 14, 2016 by eksasol
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eksasol: I have this Dell i7559 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015PYZ0J6/) and I can't get any of the Ubuntu variants to install or work correctly on it, no matter how much I fiddle with the UEFI settings. I didn't know Dell started hating linux. The Mate linux mint didn't work either, so I have to try another one.
What exactly happens when you try to boot? Have you checked to see if there's an updated UEFI available (doing that fixed issues for someone here before)?

I see it has an Nvidia GPU... the open source Nouveau drivers are known for having issues; if you managed to get *Ubuntu/Mint to install did you install the proprietary Nvidia drivers?


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eksasol: But I didn't want Linux Mint because it makes it too easy to use, and I need to refresh some knowledge of linux, but I don't want to get something too complicated
Should be no trouble using Mint and just avoiding the easy way of doing things if you want to learn more about how certain things work... I've done that before/still do that when I want to learn more about something. One of the nice things about Linux is that your options don't get restricted like that :)
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adamhm: You should be able to install most themes by simply extracting them into ~/.themes

I haven't got a lot of experience with them because I use Cinnamon & the default Cinnamon theme is good enough for me, but I just downloaded the MATE .iso to have a quick look. Have you tried clicking the "Customise" button and checking the options there after installing the new themes?
I was able to extract it properly this time - it was a folder structure error - one should extract the folder containing gtk2, gtk3, metacity folders, i.e. one level above gtk2. After installing some more I began to appreciate the default Mint themes more :), guess I'm long way till fully customizing my desktop but will keep going :).

Btw .\themes is like a shortcut to /usr/share/themes right, because when I do ls/ll into it I got nothing?
Post edited September 15, 2016 by leon30
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leon30: Btw .\themes is like a shortcut to /usr/share/themes right, because when I do ls/ll into it I got nothing?
~ (tilde) is a shortcut for your home directory and forward slash. So, ~/.themes or $HOME/.themes. Which is the "local" theme folder in your home directory. Mine has a bunch of folders in it as I installed several themes there, but it's often empty by default. Themes installed via the package manager would go to a system-wide location.
Post edited September 15, 2016 by Gydion
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adamhm: You should be able to install most themes by simply extracting them into ~/.themes

I haven't got a lot of experience with them because I use Cinnamon & the default Cinnamon theme is good enough for me, but I just downloaded the MATE .iso to have a quick look. Have you tried clicking the "Customise" button and checking the options there after installing the new themes?
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leon30: I was able to extract it properly this time - it was a folder structure error - one should extract the folder containing gtk2, gtk3, metacity folders, i.e. one level above gtk2. After installing some more I began to appreciate the default Mint themes more :), guess I'm long way till fully customizing my desktop but will keep going :).

Btw .\themes is like a shortcut to /usr/share/themes right, because when I do ls/ll into it I got nothing?
Glad you found out it was a folder structure error -because I was kind of baffled when I saw your problem as well (which is why I didn't reply yesterday -when I don't know the answer to something, I simply don't post).
Anyways, the ~/.themes folder adamhm mentioned is the hidden directory in your home folder e.g. home/leon30/.themes -similarly there's a /home/leon30/.icons. The themes and icons copied over there will only apply to you as a user and not system-wide -that is if you login as another user e.g. leon31 or open a folder with administrative privileges/as root, that profile won't use any theme inserted there (if you used such a theme for your computer's daily appearance) and will use a fallback theme instead -usually Adwaita/Gnome.
I personally use the Arc theme (hand-modified by myself to have a dark side pane) and an iconset called Hedera. Said iconset is at my /home/Treasure/.icons folder, which means that if I open a folder as root, I see the ugly Gnome icons instead.
Hope my lengthy explanation was helpful enough...

edit-ninjad by Gydion... at least I was a bit more elaborate...
Post edited September 15, 2016 by Treasure
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is coming to Mac and Linux this year!

https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/776344893757255680/photo/1

I'm getting a bad port vibe though unless they have been working on it ever since Windows edition's launch.
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Gydion: Snip
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Treasure: snip
Thanks for the replies! I have successfully installed Divergence IV theme and AwOken icon set and I'm pretty excited :)
Can you please tell how to install Emerald on Mint Mate 18, because there it is nowhere to be found in the official repos and many of the non-official are for older versions, can I get it from some official site or probably the source in order to compile it myself? I really want the transparency effect + AWN dock :)
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Treasure: snip
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leon30: Thanks for the replies! I have successfully installed Divergence IV theme and AwOken icon set and I'm pretty excited :)
Can you please tell how to install Emerald on Mint Mate 18, because there it is nowhere to be found in the official repos and many of the non-official are for older versions, can I get it from some official site or probably the source in order to compile it myself? I really want the transparency effect + AWN dock :)
I haven't heard of an Emerald theme before, are you talking about this one? (probably not though, as it says it only worked with unity and gnome-fallback, so it might not work on mate...)

edit - I just found out (after I posted the below explanation on installing old themes) that Emerald is some sort of window decorator for Compiz - I personally use the default Marco/Metacity so I don't know much about Compiz, but there's a possibility the emerald themes might be old too, so hopefully all the stuff I wrote below will still apply...)

At any rate, whichever theme you mean, for themes that might have been included in a PPA for an older ubuntu base, a way to check and see if they could be compatible with the current version would be to unzip the deb file.
I'll explain what I mean; suppose you want to install the theme I mentioned in the above link. In order to get the deb file, you copy from the install instructions the ppa:noobslab/themes part and search for it e.g. on google. You then find as the 1st search result the link to the PPA. In that page you see all available packages and can filter by ubuntu release. Click "view package details" (in small letters in the right side) and search for emerald -from the results it's obvious the last release of this one was for trusty (14.04) -clicking on the pack shows you the download link, click it and get the deb file. Now right-click (do not left-click) the deb file, click "open with" and open it with an unzipper - I personally use PeaZip rather than the default program for such an instance, but it might work with the default program too. You'll see a data.tar -open that too, and click through the directories in that file - you'll probably see something like ./usr/share and under that are the files you want (the example I gave is badly picked as it has a more complex file structure than anticipated -in this case I'll take the xenlism wildfire icons deb file - unzipping it shows data.tar/./usr/share/icons and then the icon themes). Unzip the file as usual and put the unzipped folder in /home/leon30/.themes or .icons. Then go to the appearance menu and go to the "controls" or "icons" panel and find the pack you just unzipped in .themes or .icons -apply it and see how it goes.
If this all sounded complicated its because it kind of is - I mainly use this tactic for getting deb files when I don't want to add the PPA of something for whatever reason and use the tactic of unzipping the deb file in regards to themes and icons in order to avoid accidentally adding dependencies that could ruin my pc -I once installed the Kylin icon theme 2 months ago and didn't notice it installed some other stuff, including its own version of D-Bus which ruined my keyboard languages switcher (that was awful as Greek -like Bulgarian- is a non-latin language, so I couldn't make do with the english keyboard), I had Ubuntu Mate installed at the time though, so I just wiped it and installed Mint Mate instead.
In short, it is kind of complicated to try and apply an older icon theme that's only available as a deb file and not as a regular zip or tar.gz, and you should generally try to avoid such themes if you can find current replacements or replacements with a simple zip/tar file instead...
Hope this lengthy explanation will be of some help to you...
Post edited September 17, 2016 by Treasure
I was talking about that theme , and more specifically the way to make it like on the screenshots. I've already installed the theme and tried it out, also the icon pack (AwOken) works great, but in order to have a transparent window frame and title bar (partially transparent) in the readme file is specified that effect is created by the compiz window decorator "Emerald" so I need to install that as a next step (the Emerald theme is provided within the divergence theme zip). Unfortunately Emerald is no longer maintained and is not available through the official channels and even the compiz page (the link stays but it is empty -> LINK) so I need some official or semi-official, but trustworthy location for its source in order to build it myself. AFAIK the last version was 0.9.5.

Does anyone around used Emerald soon and provide me with some pointers how to obtain it?
Post edited September 17, 2016 by leon30
I tried to install it in form some of those unofficial PPAs, but unfortunately its not available for Xenial and even the source is nowhere to be found. So essentially all of the best looking themes are no longer working and are totally crippled by emerald demise :(
Is there any way of using Emerald or Beryl themes now, or some sort of transparent window title bar and borders (not the whole window), or if I want those I should look no further than KDE Plasma and Unity?
I tried to make the window title bar and borders transparent with dconf and gconf, but to no avail strangely those doesn't work at all and I don't know why, is it because they control Metacity themes and the default ones in Mint 18 Mate are gtk based or because these tools are disabled by some other program? There are quite a few enabled options in Compiz (ccsm), but I don't know if they are actually working, how could I know if Compiz is my compositing manager or the other one in Mint - Marco (compositing is enabled in ccsm)?
Anyone have a new(ish) laptop that uses both Intel/nVidia GPUs? If so, what is your experience with Linux?

Today I had 2 misadventures installing Ubuntu 16.10 on my ASUS ROG GL552VW. After some false starts because of Nouveau locking up the system, I got it installed and running great with the Intel GPU. Then I went ahead and installed the nVidia proprietary drivers /w Prime to switch between GPUs. All seemed fine at first, after a reboot it was using the nVidia GPU.

Then the problems start as soon as I try using Prime to switch GPUs via nVidia X Settings. As soon as I do this once it's basically messed for good, and X11 locks up on log-in. The exact way it locked up before when it's trying to use Nouveau, which shouldn't be possible since I had it blacklisted.

I went into TTY1 to see if I could figure out what's going on. I assumed all Prime does is automatically edit xorg.conf and switch the active device. As far as I could tell it made a backup of the existing xorg.conf, but didn't make a new one with the new device set. So I did it myself and rebooted, only to find my xorg.conf was wiped out, along with the Prime backup of it for some reason. At that point I gave up in a rage and deleted the OS again.

At least I learned a lot about UEFI when figuring out how to get rid of GRUB.

If anyone actually reads all that and has some insight please let me know. :)
Post edited October 17, 2016 by MikeMaximus
Can't offer any help as I have no experience with Nvidia Prime.

I did play around with installing the Nvidia drivers using their own installers when I first started using Mint though & I remember that disabling Nouveau was a major hassle. Nvidia's installer did try to blacklist it but IIRC there was a bunch more Nouveau stuff that needed to be blacklisted as well before it would finally work. Since then I've only used the packages from the repositories to install Nvidia drivers.