A GTK3 theme designed to look like the default GTK1 theme. All though the look is historic, none of the code comes from original GTK1, and the recreation does not attempt to be pixel-perfect. I forked it from my own Backtrack-Motif theme, so it accepts the same palette.css files as that theme and Xfce3-Revival.
Here is what the theme looks like in practice:
- Not tested on desktops other than XFCE
- Needs more testing to find applications that break it
- No GTK-2 (or 4) version
- No XFWM theme -- but I recommend Coolclean or GTK from the xfwm4-themes collection
- Textured backgrounds are not yet implemented
- A few visual blemishes are already known
Backtrack-GTK was written in entirety by Timothy Gaskell in 2026 and is placed in the public domain under the Creative Commons CC-0 public domain declaration. Please do not submit pull requests unless your code is also fully original and placed in the public domain.
In my experience, theme designers create first, share second, and think about paperwork only third if at all. There is much more danger of finding a theme that cannot be distributed because the author mixed GPL-2-only and GPL3 code or some such boring legal impossibility than of finding your theme co-opted by evil corporate interests. Accordingly, I prefer to share original work with as few strings as possible attached, not even requiring attribution.
Blessings,
Timothy N. Gaskell
Eastertide, 2026