Created attachment 6447 [details]
Screenshot

screenshot of Libreoffice

Created attachment 6448 [details]
Screenshot of Firefox

Screenshot of Firefox, looks quite okay, but observe the scrollbar...

Even though I agree that this theme is not the most modern-looking available, it would be nice if you could avoid to use terms like "ugly", "pre-Win95" or "pre-90s", the first being subjective and the other two uselessly exaggerated.

Now concerning the issue, it's not specific to Cinnamon as LibreOffice and Firefox look similar in KDE (when not using the oxygen-gtk theme, which is no longer forced since Mageia 5 as oxygen-gtk3 is not fully compatible with GTK+3 anymore).

It looks like the default Gtk2 theme is the culprit. Installing kde-gtk-config to force using "Adwaita" for Gtk2 applications gives a better look'n'feel IMO.
The theme used out of the box seems to be the "Raleigh" theme.

If we want to keep a consistent look for Gtk2 and Gtk3 applications in all desktop environments, we should probably look for a way to enforce using Adwaita for both Gtk2 and Gtk3 as default, instead of Raleigh and Adwaita respectively.

Then each DE should adapt those default to match their own theme, e.g. KDE stills suggests oxygen-gtk and oxygen-gtk3 IIRC, and Cinnamon should probably define a Gtk2 theme that matches its Gtk3 theme.

sorry for the "ugly" and "pre 90s". I didn't want to be rude.

Anyway, as I see it, Cinnamon is GTK, right? So if I install kde-gtk-config, I put a lot of KDE-dependencies into my system. Just to have a consistent look in Libreoffice and Firefox (which are also GTK programs)? Come on... really?

In Linux Mint Cinnamon, Libreoffice has a package libreoffice-gtk which provides integration into GTK2 and libreoffice-gtk3 which provides integration into GTK3.

Is this a possible way to solve this?

I don't mean that you should use kde-gtk-config, it's the tool meant to configure the Gtk themes for KDE :-)
You can look for a way to change the Gtk2 theme in Cinnamon, but it's probably also something that the Cinnamon maintainer could do if we decide to change the defaults.

Anyway, the scope of this bug is more than just Cinnamon, most DEs use the default Gtk2 and Gtk3 themes which are respectively Raleigh and Adwaita, and they don't fit together.

CC'ing DE maintainers. Is the bug described here also an issue in your DE, and what can you do about it? For DEs using a Gtk3 theme like Cinnamon, it would make sense to force a similar Gtk2 theme.

CC: (none) => jani.valimaa, joequant, lmenut, mageia, nicolas.salguero, olav, tarakbumba

Tested LXDE: It seems to use Adwaita out of the box. AFAIK, LXDE uses Gtk2 anyway so there is no theme incoherence.

Well, Raleigh is very ugly [1] and IIRC it doesn't have Gtk3 support. Also, it's not only Firefox or Libreoffice which are ugly with Raleigh. IMHO the whole desktop is ugly with Raleigh, no matter of which DE is used.

With Gtk based DE we should use theme which supports both Gtk2 and Gtk3 to show apps "correctly" regardless of which Gtk version they're build against.

[1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/06/13/a-new-default-theme-for-gtk/

Tested XFCE: No issue either, it seems to be using oxygen-gtk so the looks are consistent. I was maybe wrong to remove "Cinnamon" from the bug summary :-)

Cinnamon uses also oxygen-gtk as a default theme so I think the problem is that nothing pulls oxygen-gtk or oxygen-gtk3 pkg during the install.

After removing oxygen-gtk, XFCE also uses Raleigh, so the same bad looks as described above can be reproduced.

IMO there is two things in this bug (though I was the one to add the second):
* Cinnamon does not define a GTK+2 theme that fits its GTK+3 theme, that should be fixed.
* The default GTK+2 theme is Raleigh, so if users of KDE or XFCE remove oxygen-gtk (which is known to cause some compatibility issues), they get the Raleigh theme. Could we patch GTK+2 to use adwaita as default theme, so that it matches GTK+3?

(In reply to Rémi Verschelde from comment #12)
> After removing oxygen-gtk, XFCE also uses Raleigh, so the same bad looks as
> described above can be reproduced.
> 
> IMO there is two things in this bug (though I was the one to add the second):
> * Cinnamon does not define a GTK+2 theme that fits its GTK+3 theme, that
> should be fixed.
> * The default GTK+2 theme is Raleigh, so if users of KDE or XFCE remove
> oxygen-gtk (which is known to cause some compatibility issues), they get the
> Raleigh theme. Could we patch GTK+2 to use adwaita as default theme, so that
> it matches GTK+3?

Please don't. Mate uses its own gtk2 and gtk3 mate and menta themes by default.

(In reply to Atilla ÃNTAÅ from comment #13)
> (In reply to Rémi Verschelde from comment #12)
> > * The default GTK+2 theme is Raleigh, so if users of KDE or XFCE remove
> > oxygen-gtk (which is known to cause some compatibility issues), they get the
> > Raleigh theme. Could we patch GTK+2 to use adwaita as default theme, so that
> > it matches GTK+3?
> 
> Please don't. Mate uses its own gtk2 and gtk3 mate and menta themes by
> default.

I've only spoken about the "default" theme, i.e. the one used when the DE does not specify its preferred theme. Currently it's Raleigh...

If you remove gtk2 theme set via settings from gtk2 DE, you'll find yourself in troubles. In cinnamon oxygen-gtk is used so you really can't remove it without changing the used theme also.

Readding Cinnamon to the summary as it seems the issue only appears in other desktops if the default settings were changed (e.g. by removing oxygen-gtk).

I guess the simplest solution for now is to make sure Cinnamon pulls in oxygen-gtk as said in comment 11.

Indeed I installed Cinnamon in a VM and in the DE settings, the "controls" theme is set to oxygen-gtk, even though task-cinnamon-minimal does not pull it in. The window decoration theme is adwaita though, so maybe it would make more sense to use adwaita for everything in Cinnamon? @Joseph, WDYT?

Created attachment 6451 [details]
Cinnamon settings with mix of adwaita and oxygen-gtk

BTW here is how the Cinnamon settings look like when oyxgen-gtk is actually installed, and therefore used for some elements while adwaita is used for the rest.

Assigning to Cinnamon maintainer. (To the other DE maintainers, sorry for the noise, the scope of this bug is not as wide as I thought initially :-).

Assignee: bugsquad => joequant

I'll change the cinnamon settings to use only Adwaita.  I don't want to pull in more packages

(In reply to Rémi Verschelde from comment #12)
> * The default GTK+2 theme is Raleigh, so if users of KDE or XFCE remove
> oxygen-gtk (which is known to cause some compatibility issues), they get the
> Raleigh theme. Could we patch GTK+2 to use adwaita as default theme, so that
> it matches GTK+3?

+1 for replacing Raleigh with Adwaita.

Patching gtk2 is an easy one, just oneliner change is needed. We'll have to add requires for adwaita-gtk2-theme to gtk+2.0 also.

Should I do this now or wait until cauldron reopens? Or does this need more discussing?

(In reply to Jani Välimaa from comment #21)
> +1 for replacing Raleigh with Adwaita.
> 
> Patching gtk2 is an easy one, just oneliner change is needed. We'll have to
> add requires for adwaita-gtk2-theme to gtk+2.0 also.
> 
> Should I do this now or wait until cauldron reopens? Or does this need more
> discussing?

I guess we should discuss this on the dev ML to make sure everyone agrees.

I have selected another theme (bluementa) in the Cinnamon control center, then i have re-selected adwaita and all is now working fine.
(Before this, i have installed extra themes...)

Hope it will help.

CC: (none) => jjaudemard

*** Bug 15845 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to Joseph Wang from comment #20)
> I'll change the cinnamon settings to use only Adwaita.  I don't want to pull
> in more packages

that's the best choice

CC: (none) => makowski.mageia

Standard theme for Cinnamon is now Adwaita. This bug seems somehow forgotten to get closed.

Closing FIXED.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED