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Install Debian 12 with modern XFCE themes

28 Nov 2024 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'

I often choose Linux Mint XFCE when I need a good looking and comfortable system quick. But sometimes I'd rather have a more stable system and match what I have on the server, which is Debian 12 with XFCE. Unfortunately Debian with XFCE doesn't look as good as Mint with XFCE. In this post I'll explain what you can do to make Debian look like Mint/Xubuntu and suitable for everyday use.

Panels

In order to make the task bar look more familiar for Windows users do:

  1. Move the panel from the top to the bottom
  2. Remove the second panel
  3. Add the "Whisker Menu" to the panel's "Items"
  4. Disable "Dark mode" on the the panel's "Appearance"
  5. Disable "Group windows by application" for the "Window Buttons" item

Note that for me Network Manager applet.

Windows + Icons

Install dependencies

sudo apt install elementary-xfce-icon-theme 
sudo apt install fonts-noto
sudo apt install greybird-gtk-theme
sudo apt install lightdm-settings
sudo apt install dmz-cursor-theme
sudo apt install mugshot

Change "Appearance" settings

  1. Go to "Appearance"
  2. Set "Style" to "Greybird"
  3. Set "Icons" to "elementary Xfce"
  4. Set "Fonts" to "Noto Sans Regular" size 9 and "Noto Mono Regular" size 10
  5. Check "Enable anti-aliasing" set "Hinting" to "Slight"

Change "Window Manager" settings

  1. Go to "Window Manager"
  2. Set "Style" to "Greybird"
  3. Set "Title font" to "Noto Sans Bold" size 9

Change "Mouse and Touchpad" settings

  1. Go to "Mouse and Touchpad"
  2. Go to "Theme"
  3. Choose "DMZ (White)" size 24

Change "Login Window" settings

  1. Go to "Login Window"
  2. Set the correct "Backround" image
  3. Set the "GTK theme" to "Greybird"
  4. Set the "Icon theme" to "elementary-xfce"
  5. Set the "Mouse pointer" to "DMZ-White"
  6. Go to "Users"
  7. Disable "Allow manual login"
  8. Disable "Hide the user list"
  9. Fill in the "Username"

This should look familiar if you are used to Mint XFCE or Xubuntu like me.

Firefox instead of Firefox ESR

If you want the always up-to-date firefox as I want then you may want to install Firefox instead of Firefox-ESR using:

wget -q https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -O- | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update && sudo apt remove firefox-esr
sudo apt install firefox

Note that by default the profile is not migrated.

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