I am slowly losing my vision, and have compensated in various ways over the last three years. I currently have a bunch of VM’s to check out different distros, On Ubuntu Mint with the MATE DE I tried a theme known as Gruvbox Dark that really helps me see the menus and to read. I put as much of it as I can on the 26.04 Ubuntuu Mate install, and it looks a bit different. On both it is a bit of a mash up of window borders from other themes, and things from others. Is there a graphical way to control things like folder colors, font color, panel backgrounds, menu backgrounds, field outline color - basically everything? Don’t laugh at my example - you may need this someday. * Adding a second photo is of the theme on Ubuntu MATE v26.04 You can see it’s broken of the software app.
Sorry to hear about that, @jmarkus!
Can you be a bit more specific about the condition that is developing?
- central tunnel vision?
- cataracts?
- peripheral vision only due to retinal detachment?
Different strategies, and Apps, are used for various conditions.
I do understand you very well because ‘modern’ ultra bright/dark themes with small fonts became unbearable for my vision long ago enough.
My personal recipe is
- Mate DE
- enlarged fonts; i.e.
Look and feelconfiguration applet - tweaked Mate theme which can be found here (see Human GTK3 - TraditionalHumanized Theme for Ubuntu Mate 18.04 - Development Discussion - Ubuntu MATE Community as well)
- low LCD brightness
Good luck!
Eric, I guess it is basically diabetic retinopathy, but in a somewhat unusual way. The docs switched my meds and it was an over correction. The sudden change caused my retinas to swell, and the effect was almost immediate. Biggest problem was the left eye’s retina wrinkled which distorts geometric shapes. Then your brain makes up info to reconcile the difference between the two eyes, and it generally blurs things. Eye injections have helped over the last three years. Prior to this I used light themes which became painful, because of eye strain. Photoshop’s proprietory gui is really problematic, but I’ve managed to continue it’s use.
Thanks Eugene. I’ve pretty much have done all that. I installed the gnome icon set while looking at “Humanity’s theme”. I prefer the cobbled look now. I can live with the changed icons. I really wish when you opened “Appearance” in the control panel it would all be together. That it would go full screen with example graphics of the different areas you are adjusting (OS - Apps) - piece by piece. A tab for folder selection, window controls, window borders, font face, font color, highlight color, background color, menus, icon sets, cursor sets, cursor size and motion - I could on, but generally i would like it centralized and not spread around in different areas that have global control only. I guy can dream, can’t he?
The only other avenue that you might pursue is to approach the forums for “Diabetic Retinopathy” or “Diabetic Community” and post a query about the availability of such OSS tools for Linux, and see what the wind blows your way! You could be lucky and have a windfall drop into your lap!
Beyond that, have you gone to the various sites, such as GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, SourceForge, to search for tools that might offer the kind of assistance you are looking for, as both individual Apps or centralized over-arching catalogue index tools.
If you haven’t already seen this, you may be interested in:
After you’ve done everything you want to do in the way of customizing, you might want to consider formalizing the setup using the Policy Kit approach. I only know of it, I don’t use it myself. But, if your condition is one that is gradually worsening, the approach of having an editable specification file applying all the desired changes may be the thing you need. Just a thought.
Good suggestions @ericmarceau and I hope that they are useful to our friend @jmarkus