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I think the whole appearance module needs a rework. Instead of showing soo many options (is the biggest module), it would be a lot better if it work kinda like the GTK dialogue (which is fairly better). Actually, it would be great if the themes engines were just that, and themes, by their extension, could be related to certain engine (regardless of how different or customizable is the engine), for example, a "theme" could just be a ".theme" with a "color scheme file" and the "theme" which is only a certain configuration to the given engine. Kinda like the whatever.theme (which is in fact just a tarball or something like that) containing a "whatever.bespin" means it's a bespin theme, so it applies the bespin theme with that configuration (and the bundled color scheme or other settings, like the icon theme).

This could work with everything a ".oxygen", ".skulpture", ".quantum" or ".GTK". It should only apply the engine and the configuration. It would be a lot more transparent for the user, themes could be listed on the main window, and a "Customize or details" could contain the rest of the features now showed directly.

This would mean that, for KDE, users could have both, all Qt themes and all GTK themes. The only possible problem would be the GTK engines, which also need to be installed, but, by using packagekit, or just by suggesting installing certain engine should be enough.

So, it would be something like this:

The user just downloads Carbon.theme (it's a tarball in reality), and drag & drop it to the window (or by importing it).

The tarball actually contains the following:

-Carbon.quantum (a theme configuration/tarball which will be used with the quantum engine).
-Carbon.colorscheme (a simple colorscheme).
-Carbon.icons (which is tarball containing the icon theme).
-Any other thing that may be needed.

It's pretty simple, I think it would make everything a lot easier, for the user a ".theme" is just that, and drag and drop would do the trick, right now is much more complicated, also, it's easy for users to create new "themes" without much knowledge.

There's at least one other request for Windows-like "themes" here on the forums but this is the best description I've seen yet and settle other issues too.

Thank you, I think is a reliable option because it doesn't need any re-factoring regarding the themes or Qt. They don't even need to change, it just changes from the user point of view. Implementing something like this should be easy I guess.

I know, this isn't exactly right, but I think it's worth reading, so bump.

Yep, when I started using kde, it was a pain in the a**, to find out how and where to install themes files. Many users would gave up

And than there could be a simple "Download new themes" dialog like there is for plasmas appearence right now. Great idea.

In deed, if it is possible, there could be a linux generic install file, that could include themes, styles and apps form fource and deb or rpm.

This could be a tarbal with install.me file, that would tell installer what it is.

For themes we already discussed, but for apps...

When building from source in 99% cases there are 4 lines in terminal configure, make, sudo make install etc. Why they cant be inserted automatically? install.me could contain records what commands should be executed.

About deb/rpm, its more questionable, but, lets say you have only deb, but need rpm. we have tools to do the job. Why this cant be done automatically too? If there are precompiled rpm, installer should highly recommend to redownload rpm, but if you dont have Internet connection, it would convert.

If we integrate packagekit, this could solve missing dependencies problem for good

Advanced user could just simply untar package and work as usually

One of the bigest problems for to enter new users to linux is too compicated instalation of apps

It would not be a good idea to distribute in source form since most users will not have the needed dependencies installed.

++ Great Idea!