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I do not like full-dark themes in Lubuntu, but I like dark menus.

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In Lubuntu 12.04 was using one theme that was called Mediteranean Ligh if I remember well that was like that.

A similar question got an answer that indicated a new Ambiance theme with dark menus. (At some point I used Ambiance and Clearlooks with dark menus, I think, but cannot find them anymore.)

But after upgrading to 12.10 these themes with dark menus began displaying some incorrect white background under fonts on certain menus and buttons. Like this, in the network settings: enter image description here

or on the buttons of Synaptic

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while the main menus and most other menus were ok, dark, as supposed to be.

This happens when I use my older darked-menus theme MediterraneanLight, or the theme recommended in the answer to the question mentioned (AmbianceOneiric-Master).

(This question here is Lubuntu-specific. Therefore, please do not flag it as duplicate of others here that ask about having back the dark menus of the Ambiance theme: all these questions have been closed as duplicate of this one, already mentioned, which is Gnome/Unity-specific, and the AmbianceOneiric-Master theme indicated as answer would not work in Lubuntu 12.10.)

What to do?

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I have a workaround for this:

  • first, I have identified a theme that is most desirable except that it has no dark menus. I selected Ambiance.

  • then, I have selected some theme that has dark menus (all of them, like MediterraneanLight and AmbianceOneiric-Master having the problem reported in the question)

  • In usr/share/themes i have created a new folder and in it copied the gtk2 folder of the Ambiance theme and the gtk3 folder of one of the two darked-menus themes mentioned. The new theme resulted works now fine, all menus are dark and without errors.

I guess Lubuntu doesn't handle well all gtk3 themes. In the themes that i used in Lubuntu there are unity or metacity folders that Lubuntu doesn't use. I guess these can be deleted. So, the idea is to find a theme that has good gtk3 display in Lubuntu (like Ambiance) and use its gtk3 folder to "heal" the themes that do not work ok concerning gtk3 but have other desirable features (like dark menus) that I guess are related to gtk2.

  • A last fix may be needed for setting the same color scheme for both gtk2 and gtk3 appearance of menus and programs (like selection in the now dark menus: for example Ambiance-GTK3 menus have orange selection while the main menus and others may have blue or other color selection). Lubuntu's "Customize look and feel" lets you set the colors yourself. Using customized color scheme for selected items and other stuff would set that color scheme in both gtk2 and gtk3 programs.

enter image description here

(Taking a theme with dark menus and deleting the gtk3 folder completely would result in the dark menus (which previously had errors) becoming white with dark letters (but with no errors), while some programs that previously had errors like synaptic would appear without any theme).

This "blindfolded" and naive approach is the one I sometimes use to get mixed themes like that.