Silver

Overview

Silver is a fork of Klassy which is a theming utility for the KDE Desktop Environment. This one is modified specifically to use new features specific to SonicDE. It consists of a Global Theme which applies several components: Window Decoration, Application Style, Colour Scheme, Desktop style, and Icons. The Silver Application Style has arguably the best scrollbars on any platform.

Main Silver global theme

After installing, it is recommended to first try the main Global Theme, called Silver.

The global theme is enabled in System Settings->Colours & Themes->Global Theme. NB: you need to initially use the Global Theme settings screen to apply the theme properly; if you intially apply via the Quick Settings screen or the Light/Dark selector then the full Desktop & window layout will not be applied. Afterwards, you can set Light/Dark switching for day/night, respectively.

Left panel theme selection (recommended for 16:9 laptops):

Bottom panel theme selection (recommended for everything else):

The default Silver theme is designed to be pragmatic for long-term every-day use, not for instant likes on social media or "ricing" sites. Silver is based on the work of Paul A McAuley who evolved the Klassy theme to be arguably more polished and usable than Breeze, with influences from the original Breeze design, the "Blue Ocean" refresh, and the original KDE 1.

Customizability

Silver is highly customizable - you can make your system as classy or unclassy as you like!

For easy customization, the Silver Settings GUI application is installed. silver-settings also has command-line options to allow Preset file imports, load Presets and generate system icons. Run silver-settings --help for details.

It is recommended to first try the bundled Presets in Silver Settings before any fine-tuning:

• Provides numerous built-in perfectly-pixel-snapped button icons, as well as the ability to display window-*-symbolic system icons:

• Provides an Application Style aso that icons in dockable panels, MDI applications and application tabs are consistent (make sure to enable the Silver Application Style):

  

• Provides an Icon theme so that context menus and GTK applications consistently match the main titlebar icons (make sure to enable the Silver system icon theme and configure the icons by clicking "System Icon Generation..." in Silver Settings):

  

• Configurable button size, shape, translucency, colours and outlining.

• Default buttons are "Integrated Rounded Rectangles" with translucent outlined accent colours, with a large clickable area. These are designed to complement the "Blue Ocean" design refresh, along with the system accent colour feature. Shown below with Klasse icons (inspired by KDE1):

  

• Alternative "Traffic lights" background colours:

  

• Alternative "Full-height Rounded Rectangle" button shape (ClassiK v3 preset):

  

• Full-height Rectangular (ClassikStyles preset) or Circular (Classik-Aurorae preset) button highlights:

• Ability to inherit system colour-scheme highlight colours for hover and focus, as well as titlebar colour. Auto-enhances contrast in cases where it is poor.

• Option to have matching titlebar colour and border colour.

• Configurable button spacing (left and right), titlebar margins (sides, top/bottom and option for different maximized), corner radius; all with scaling for HiDPI:

• Transparency/opacity configurable for both active/inactive titlebars/headers; setting to make maximized windows opaque; blur is configurable.

• Configurable thin window outline with optional accent colours:

• Configurable scrollbars:

• Configurable animations

 

Installation

Silver requires SonicDE 6.3, or later, so please check you have this in sonic-system-info before trying to install. You can either download the pre-built packages or compile from source.

Pre-built packages

Respositories are available from many system packages under the name sonic-silver-theme. Check your distro's package manager for availability.    

Compile from source

Step 1: First, Install Dependencies

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap build dependencies

sudo zypper in git cmake kf6-extra-cmake-modules gettext

sudo zypper in "cmake(KF6ColorScheme)" "cmake(KF6Config)" "cmake(KF6CoreAddons)" "cmake(KF6FrameworkIntegration)" "cmake(KF6GuiAddons)" "cmake(KF6I18n)" "cmake(KF6KCMUtils)" "cmake(KF6KirigamiPlatform)" "cmake(KF6WindowSystem)" "cmake(Qt6Core)" "cmake(Qt6DBus)" "cmake(Qt6Quick)" "cmake(Qt6Svg)" "cmake(Qt6Widgets)" "cmake(Qt6Xml)"

Debian/Ubuntu build dependencies

sudo apt install git build-essential cmake extra-cmake-modules libkirigami-dev libkf6kcmutils-dev libkf6colorscheme-dev libkf6i18n-dev libkf6iconthemes-dev kirigami2-dev libkf6package-dev libkf6service-dev libkf6windowsystem-dev libx11-dev libkdecorations3-dev libplasma-dev qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev gettext qt6-svg-dev

KDE Neon build dependencies

sudo apt install git build-essential cmake kf6-extra-cmake-modules kf6-extra-cmake-modules kf6-frameworkintegration-dev kf6-kcmutils-dev kf6-kcolorscheme-dev kf6-kconfig-dev kf6-kconfigwidgets-dev kf6-kcoreaddons-dev kf6-kguiaddons-dev kf6-ki18n-dev kf6-kiconthemes-dev kf6-kirigami2-dev kf6-kpackage-dev kf6-kservice-dev kf6-kwindowsystem-dev kirigami2-dev kwayland-dev libx11-dev libkdecorations3-dev libplasma-dev qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev gettext qt6-svg-dev

Arch/Manjaro build dependencies

sudo pacman -S git frameworkintegration gcc-libs glibc kcmutils kcolorscheme kconfig kcoreaddons kdecoration kguiaddons ki18n kiconthemes kirigami kwidgetsaddons kwindowsystem qt6-base qt6-declarative qt6-svg xdg-utils extra-cmake-modules kirigami2

Fedora build dependencies

sudo dnf install git cmake extra-cmake-modules gettext

sudo dnf install "cmake(KDecoration3)" "cmake(KF6ColorScheme)" "cmake(KF6Config)" "cmake(KF6CoreAddons)" "cmake(KF6FrameworkIntegration)" "cmake(KF6GuiAddons)" "cmake(KF6I18n)" "cmake(KF6KCMUtils)" "cmake(KF6KirigamiPlatform)" "cmake(KF6WindowSystem)" "cmake(Qt6Core)" "cmake(Qt6DBus)" "cmake(Qt6Quick)" "cmake(Qt6Svg)" "cmake(Qt6Widgets)" "cmake(Qt6Xml)"

Step 2: Then download, build and install

Download, build and install from source script:

git clone https://github.com/Sonic-DE/silver-theme.git

cd silver-theme

git checkout master

./install.sh

Uninstall build script:

./uninstall.sh

 

Gentoo Linux package

There is a package available for Silver in the guru repository. You can install Silver on Gentoo Linux by following these steps.

First, install the eselect repository module with:

sudo emerge -av app-eselect/eselect-repository

Enable the guru repository by executing:

sudo eselect repository enable guru

Sync the repositories:

sudo emaint sync -r guru

Add the package keywords to /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords:

echo "gui-apps/silver ~amd64" | sudo tee /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/silver

Finally, compile & install the package with:

sudo emerge -av gui-apps/silver

 

Donations

To Be Determined