There are a few of us fossils left who remember skeumorphic scheming…
Kvantum is clunky, nowhere near as efficient as a proper modern theme - but for sure, when I run QMPlay2 I love that I can use KVantum to skin it like an old-school application, maybe with glassy buttons or something.
However, I think overall KVantum is an outdated concept.
From all of my experimenting with theming, I have it boiled down to just one or two options which seem to run well across the board:
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Themes must follow MY colour scheme. Anything else is toast… and I prefer if it works well with colours taken from the wallpapers I collected over the years.
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A great number of ‘Global Themes’ on offer are simply re-using stuff and pretty much are a waste of time.
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Breeze is very good. Breath (from Manjaro) is also excellent… then you could look at Klassy (some variations there) and - well not much else is of interest TBH.
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Application Style (the target of Kvantum) - look at Breeze, Klassy, and Lightly. Lightly is my favourite option - it is being reborn, and you can build it from a new fork for QT6… (try copy and paste this whole text… see if it builds for you
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git clone --single-branch --depth=1 https://github.com/Bali10050/Lightly.git
cd Lightly && mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF ..
cd ./kdecoration/config/
make -j 12
cd ../../
make -j 12
sudo make install
Plasma styles - well, same story. I have a copy of Breath with a classic clock I pasted there, but I don’t usually bother with the desktop clock - so just try a couple out. I have noticed with my current installation that the volume doesn’t always work properly (i.e. on the slider, if you click the volume in Tray, you can’t see the audio level) and needs a quick log out to refresh.
Generally I go with Breath anyway - or Breeze.
Decorations - get Klassy installed, I have standard breeze widgets but coloured red/green/white - looks nice and isn’t a Mac or Windows style.