How to build firefox with other libs than GTK

thurnax · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 90

I'm using Gentoo with Plasma 5 environment. Something that I have noticed when I install the firefox-bin or chrome-bin packages is that the GUI layout is different from the GUI of standard KDE applications. I think by default, all the bin packages are built with GTK.

Then I saw another distro where the Firefox had the same layout as Plasma 5 so I decided to build Firefox manually myself. But when I did that, it had the same looks as the binary version.

So, how can I make Firefox build so that it has the same interface as KDE? I guess what I need to do is to swap the GTK with KDE libs, if that's the way to do it, then how do I do it?

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:07 pm Post subject:

Sure it's firefox or (insert name of variant)?

The stock firefox uses GTK and there's not much that can be done to "swap" to a different toolkit, it will require rewrite.

Arch has a writeup about it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/firefox

It looks like OpenSuSE has hacked Firefox to make it more KDE-friendly - though technically speaking they can't call it "Firefox" for legal reasons. Looks like you'll have to build that version which isn't in portage... maybe you can coax a Gentoo dev to incorporate it?
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Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

For me Firefox looks pretty decent under Pasma. It all depends on having a nice plama-gtk engine installed. Nice one is breeze for example. You can adjust the look and feel of Gtk-apps in the KDE systemsettings.
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Barbieken · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Posts: 82

The problem with firefox and in other GTK apps is that exceptionally ugly GTK "Open File" dialog. And the default Breeze theme, broken in a few recent releases because of changes in GTK 3.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

You don't change the backend library. You change the gtk theme. You may be able to research what the other distro is using and use it in gentoo.

I believe there is a menu option to do this. I can't point you directly to it since I haven't used KDE in over 3 years.
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Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

firefox in pg_overlay with opensuse-kde patches