Is theming still possible in Gnome?

General Help
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Hi guys, I'm wondering.. Is it still possible (without too many complications) to theme Gnome Zorin 18 with gtk4 themes? Does the empty .libadwaita file work 100%?

And if not, is there a user-friendly easy to pick up distro with other DE that is more customizable? I'm not a big of a terminal user, just some basic stuff. I use my laptop to use FL Studio with wine, some basic work stuff and browsing web. I like Zorin, but the customization is not great for me lately. Before I used Mint, but no matter what I did, I was never able to get rid of the "old looking" system, even though it was a great experience.

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Yes, You can still do that.

I have done that, too and it still works.

Mint would be a Possibility - at least Theming it is easy. Another Option would be a Distro with KDE Plasma Desktop. Plasma offers a lot of Settings to adjust the Desktop. When using it the first, it can be a bit overwhelming. But when You look for something that You can tweak with built-in Possibilities, that is a good Adress.

You could install the Plasma Desktop on Zorin; this is in the Repo's. Other Options would be something like Debian with KDE or Fedora KDE. KDE Neon would be, too. But it could happen that the Experience might not be the smoothest.

Then, there would be POP OS with their new Cosmic Desktop. The Customization Options are somewhere between Gnome and KDE.

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The answer to this is actually a hard No.

I have tested this extensively, across a wide variety of applications and many different themes and theming styles.

The way LibAdwaita works is that it gives itself priority. Then, it hides it's .css, so it will not show up in GTK Inspector. Lastly, it injects its .css styling, prioritized over any of yours.

The .libadwaita file can assert some additional user priority, but not all.
All it does is call upon a process similar to libadwaita-without-libadwaita or libadapta that halts some of LibAdwaita's priority taking and injection and redirect to the standard widget building toolkit.

The way GTK4 is built: Gnome removed widget control from the toolkit. While GTK,2,and 3 all had a complete toolkit, GTK4 does not. They removed those widget controls and moved them over into LibAdwaita.

Then, they set LibAdwaita as an Application Dependency, requiring that you have it, in addition to the now Incomplete GTK4, (You need both) in order to supply the entire toolkit.

This is a Soft Block that sidesteps the GPL licensing, keeping it "open source" while behaving as Proprietary Software by making it so convoluted and integrated that it is highly unlikely an independent developer will successfully fork and implement it broadly.

Personally, it makes me feel 100% like I am back under Microsoft.
I should not have to daily defend freedom from domineering controllers.

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I guess, I didn't tried so much like You but with the Stuff what I tried, it worked to add an empty .libadwaita File in the gtk-4.0 Folder and then reboot. I use a Theme with that at the Moment.

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I think it's useless too because I don't need it with my theme with Zorin 18 and I didn't use it with 17.2 and 17.3, but maybe I'm wrong.
I just use the trick given by the the theme dev, pushing a gtk.css and an assets folder in .config/gtk-4.0/
It also work for all the theme I tried, and for flatpak I use Flatseal

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That I had, too. But it wasn't enough.

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So it depend the used theme...

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Could be, yes. And maybe how it is built and set up.

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You can test by adding the GTK Widget Factory

sudo apt install libadwaita-1-examples

And comparing the GTK4 version next to the GTK3 version

sudo apt install libadwaita-1-examples

Right off the bat, Gnome-Software will display differences. At a glance, it may look similar to how it would look on GTK3 without LibAdwaita injected styling, if using the .libadwaita file because it helps a lot, but is not 100%.

The innermost window border inside the app is fully styled by injected LibAdwaita and all list views are, note the separators and grid view background - all are injected Adwaita, dark or light depending on if your theme is dark or light.

Gnome boxes is another one that has an interior window styled fully in Adwaita.

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All i can say with my (limited) Experience is: when I only use a Theme in the Way @Nourpon has described, it will theme my System but the Window Titlebars have not the right Size and the Nautilus Sidebar not, too. But when I add the .libadwaita File it is all fitting. And as long as it works, that is what matters to me.

When there are Theme, who work without this, good. Then this additional Step isn't neccessary. But when it doesn't work, adding the File is Worth a try.

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I was trying to understand why I don't need it... It's because all my themes have a little install.sh who copy a gtk.css and an assets folder in .config/gtk-4.0/ from a folder inside the theme named libadwaita. So I tried Otis who doesn't have this kind of "trick" and it only work if I use the empty .libadwaita for this theme (and certainly other).

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