pixflat-theme

The Raspberry Pi OS desktop look for Debian: the official PiXflat, PiXnoir, PiXtrix, PiXonyx and PiX themes with their icons, cursors, fonts, wallpapers, sounds, panel, file manager and login screen. It works on LXDE, LXQt, Xfce, GNOME, Budgie, Cinnamon, MATE, Openbox, labwc and, partly, KDE Plasma.

Everything comes from the two official archives: archive.raspberrypi.org for the Raspberry Pi OS packages, Debian for the rest. Your system stays Debian: no repository is added and no Debian package is replaced or removed (see Debian safety).

Script	Internet	Installs from
install.sh	required	the newest official packages, downloaded and verified as it runs
install-offline.sh	not needed	the local repository in packages/

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/b1ack0p/pixflat-theme.git
cd pixflat-theme
./install.sh                 # install every theme, then choose the look
./install.sh -y              # or no questions at all

Without internet access, use ./install-offline.sh instead. Run either as your normal user: it asks for sudo to install the packages, to write the login screen settings and to record what it installed. Your own settings are written without it.

No options are needed. Both scripts detect your Debian release, architecture, user and desktop session themselves, install every theme your release supports, and ask at the end which look to apply.

Themes

Theme (-t)	Look	Font	Wallpaper
pixflat	light, Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm (default on Debian 11 and 12)	Piboto	fisherman
pixnoir	dark, Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm	Piboto	fisherman
pixtrix	light, Raspberry Pi OS Trixie (default on Debian 13)	Nunito Sans Light	sunrise
pixonyx	dark, Raspberry Pi OS Trixie	Nunito Sans Light	sunrise
pix	legacy, Raspberry Pi OS Buster/Bullseye	Piboto	fisherman

Every theme is installed on every supported release (about 76 MB, mostly wallpapers) and any theme can be combined with any icon set:

./install.sh -y -t pixnoir --icons pixtrix   # a specific look, no questions
./install.sh --apply-only                 # switch the look later, without installing
./install.sh --only pixflat               # install one family instead of all

Your desktop's appearance settings (LXAppearance, Xfce Appearance, …) list the installed themes as well, but change only the GTK theme and icons; --apply-only switches the whole look, including fonts, wallpaper, panel and window borders.

What you get

The settings are the ones Raspberry Pi OS itself uses, taken from its own configuration packages (raspberrypi-ui-mods for Bookworm, rpd-common, rpd-x-core and rpd-wayland-core for Trixie).

Area	What is applied
Fonts	the Raspberry Pi OS UI font at 12 pt, Liberation Mono for monospace
Rendering	antialiasing, full hinting, subpixel order; 24 px cursors and toolbar icons; no icons in menus and buttons
Windows	the theme's Openbox and labwc settings: title bar layout, round corners, invisible resize handles, window placement
Panel (LXDE, Debian 13)	where Debian's LXDE panel is installed: Raspberry Pi's own panel in its own layout: menu, launchers, taskbar, tray, eject, Bluetooth, volume, clock, battery, magnifier, and its Run and Shutdown dialogs, with the Raspberry Pi OS keyboard shortcuts
Panel (LXDE, Debian 11 and 12)	Debian's panel, in the same layout and size
Notification icons	the Raspberry Pi OS icons for sound, network and Bluetooth, so Debian's applets look like Raspberry Pi's plugins
Application menu (LXDE)	the Raspberry Pi OS categories and order, with Help, Preferences, Run and Shutdown at the end
File manager	on Debian 13, where Debian's file manager is installed: Raspberry Pi's own file manager, installed beside it, with the Raspberry Pi OS window, toolbar and side pane settings; on Debian 11 and 12 Debian's file manager gets the same settings
Desktop	the wallpaper, desktop colours and font, trash and drive icons
Login screen	Raspberry Pi's own greeter, with its layout, background and colours, where Debian's LightDM GTK greeter is installed
Sounds	event sounds with the freedesktop sound theme

On other desktops the same GTK theme, icons, cursor, fonts and wallpaper are applied through that desktop's own settings:

Desktop	Applied
Xfce	theme, icons, cursor, fonts, wallpaper, top panel, and an Xfwm4 theme generated from the official Openbox theme
GNOME, Budgie	GTK 3 theme, icons, cursor, fonts, button layout, wallpaper, light/dark preference
Cinnamon, MATE	theme, icons, cursor, fonts, wallpaper
LXQt	icons, cursor, Openbox theme, wallpaper (GTK applications use the GTK theme)
Openbox, labwc	the window settings above; labwc also cursor and GTK settings
KDE Plasma	icons and cursor (Plasma and Qt keep Breeze)

Small additions

Raspberry Pi OS's own packages assume a Raspberry Pi, so a few things are added to make them fit Debian:

• The Debian logo replaces the Raspberry Pi logo on the menu button and the login screen, whichever icon set is selected.
• Icon and cursor names the official sets lack are added, so Debian's applets, dialogs and file manager show Raspberry Pi artwork instead of fallback icons.
• The panel reloads when you pick another icon set in Customize Look and Feel, which the panel does not notice by itself.
• Title bar buttons all grow on hover, including the middle button of a maximised window.
• Xfwm4 themes are generated for Xfce, and a colour layer for GTK 4 and libadwaita applications, which cannot use the theme itself (--no-gtk4 skips it).
• Tray applets Raspberry Pi OS does not show — clipboard managers such as Diodon, other volume applets, and a second authentication agent — are hidden once for your user, not removed. Turn one on again in Desktop Session Settings and it stays.
• Only the adapted icon sets are offered in the appearance tools; the official sets stay installed and keep working. On Debian 13, Debian's file manager entry is hidden so the menu shows one File Manager, and folders open in Raspberry Pi's.
• The desktop and panel are restarted at the end of a run, so the new look appears at once; open windows are not affected.

Panel, menu and tray are set up on the first installation, and refreshed by later runs only while they are still the layout this installer wrote. As soon as you change anything in the panel's own preferences, the panel is yours: plugins and applets you add or remove there are kept when you update or change the look.

Options

All options are optional; they override what is detected.

-t, --theme NAME     theme to apply: pixflat | pixnoir | pixtrix | pixonyx | pix
    --icons NAME     icon set to apply: pixflat | pixtrix | pix (default: the theme's own)
    --only NAME      install only this theme's family instead of all themes
-d, --desktop LIST   other desktops than the detected one: all, none, or e.g. lxde,xfce
-u, --user NAME      configure another user's desktop (needs sudo)
    --wallpaper W    a file in /usr/share/rpd-wallpaper (e.g. aurora) or a path
    --no-wallpaper   skip the wallpaper packages (about 72 MB)
    --4k             use the 4K wallpapers instead (about 196 MB)
    --no-font        keep your current fonts
    --no-panel       keep your panel and application menu
    --no-file-manager  keep Debian's file manager as the only one
    --no-gtk4        no GTK 4/libadwaita colour layer
    --no-lightdm     keep the login screen as it is
    --qt             make Qt applications follow the GTK theme
    --suite NAME     Raspberry Pi OS release to take packages from (default: matched to your Debian)
    --install-only   install packages only; --apply-only: choose and apply a look only
    --check          show available updates; change nothing
    --uninstall      restore previous settings and remove what was installed
                     (--remove does the same)
-y, --yes            non-interactive    -n, --dry-run    show, change nothing
-v, --verbose        print every command
-h, --help           the full list       -V, --version    the version

Every run that changes something writes a log, ~/pixflat-theme-DATE-TIME.log, with each step and the state of the desktop afterwards. It is the first place to look when something is not as expected. --check and --dry-run write nothing at all.

Updating

No APT source is added, so apt upgrade does not update the Raspberry Pi OS packages. Running the installer again does: it always checks the official archive, and installs every package that has a newer version.

./install.sh --check     # list available updates, change nothing (no sudo needed)
./install.sh             # install them; each package is shown as new, an update, or up to date

A newer installed version is never downgraded. With install-offline.sh the same commands compare against packages/; refresh it on a connected machine with ./install-offline.sh --update-packages.

Uninstalling

./install.sh --uninstall

This restores every setting and file that was changed, removes the generated package and, after asking (-y answers yes), the packages the installer added. A package that other software has come to need is kept — APT's own simulation decides — so uninstalling never removes anything else.

Debian safety

The installer follows Debian's DontBreakDebian guidelines.

• No FrankenDebian. No Raspberry Pi (or other) APT source is added. Only individual, verified packages are installed: themes, icons, fonts, wallpapers, GTK 2 engines and, on Debian 13, Raspberry Pi's panel and file manager.
• Nothing from Debian is replaced. Any Raspberry Pi package whose name also exists in your APT sources is refused. Raspberry Pi's file manager, the one package that would replace a Debian one, is repacked to run beside it under its own program name, so nothing of Debian's is removed or overwritten.
• Nothing is removed to make room. APT runs with --no-remove, and an older version never replaces a newer one. The installer upgrades no package of its own accord; APT may still update a Debian dependency from your own sources if one of the packages requires a newer version.
• Everything is tracked by dpkg, with two exceptions the uninstaller undoes: the login screen settings in /etc/lightdm/pi-greeter.conf (the original is kept and restored) and the list of packages it installed, in /var/lib/pixflat-theme. Everything else ships as a generated package, pixflat-theme-debian, which APT removes cleanly.
• Only official sources. Downloads are limited to https://archive.raspberrypi.org/ and https://deb.debian.org/; other addresses, plain HTTP and redirects are refused. Before installing, the installer checks where APT would take each package from and refuses anything that is not Debian's or one of the verified files.
• Only verified content. Raspberry Pi indexes are checked against the Raspberry Pi Archive Signing Key pinned in the script (CF8A 1AF5 02A2 AA2D 763B AE7E 82B1 2992 7FA3 303E), Debian indexes against debian-archive-keyring, and every package against its SHA256.
• Your settings are backed up before they are changed, and restored by --uninstall.

How it chooses packages

1. The matching release: Debian 11 uses the Raspberry Pi OS bullseye packages, Debian 12 bookworm, Debian 13 and newer trixie. Packages that contain compiled code always come from the matching release, so they are built against your libraries. Icons, fonts, wallpapers and themes hold no compiled code and may come from any release, so every theme works everywhere.
2. Only what Debian can satisfy: a version is used only if every dependency, with its version, is available from Debian. Raspberry Pi's own rebuilds of Debian packages (version suffix +rpt) are never installed.
3. Renamed dependencies: where an official package names a library Debian has since renamed, only its Depends field is rewritten to the current name. APT still checks every dependency.

Offline repository

packages/ is a small APT repository covering Debian 11, 12 and 13 on amd64, arm64, armhf and i386: the Raspberry Pi OS packages and the official Debian packages they need that a Debian desktop installation does not already have (about 320 MB, mostly wallpapers). VERSIONS.md lists every package with its version and where it came from, SHA256SUMS covers every file, and install-offline.sh checks each file before installing it with APT, without going online.

Rebuild it on a machine with internet access:

./install-offline.sh --update-packages

Unchanged packages are reused, so only new versions are downloaded. On a system without a desktop installation, use the online installer instead.

Requirements

Debian 11 or newer, or a derivative, on amd64, i386, arm64 or armhf; bash 4.4 or newer; sudo; and curl or wget for the online installer. Everything else (gpgv, dpkg-deb, apt) is part of every Debian installation.

Login screen notes

• The login screen uses Raspberry Pi's greeter, selected in a drop-in file of pixflat-theme-debian and configured in /etc/lightdm/pi-greeter.conf. The original file is kept and restored by --uninstall; settings in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf take precedence.
• Where that greeter cannot run, Debian's LightDM GTK greeter is styled to look as close as possible instead.
• The user list is shown, as in Raspberry Pi OS. To hide it again, set greeter-hide-users=true in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.

Where the packages come from

Raspberry Pi OS: https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/ (signed indexes in dists/, packages in pool/main/)

Component	Packages
Themes	pixflat-theme (PiXflat, PiXnoir), pixtrix-theme (PiXtrix, PiXonyx), pix-theme (PiX)
Icons and cursors	pixflat-icons, pixtrix-icons, rpd-icons
GTK 2 engines	gtk2-engines-pixflat, gtk2-engines-clearlookspix
Fonts	fonts-piboto, fonts-nunito-sans
Panel (Debian 13)	lxpanel-pi with its plugins, pishutdown, gui-runcmd
File manager (Debian 13)	pcmanfm-pi
Login screen	pi-greeter
Wallpapers	rpd-wallpaper, rpd-wallpaper-trixie and their 4K sets; the login screen wallpaper comes from rpd-common, which is unpacked but never installed

The desktop settings are the values from raspberrypi-ui-mods (Bookworm) and rpd-metas (Trixie). Those packages configure a Raspberry Pi system, so they are never installed; only their values are applied.

Debian: your APT sources, or https://deb.debian.org/debian/ when building packages/

Component	Packages
GTK 2 engine and runtime	gtk2-engines-pixbuf and the GTK 2 libraries
Icon fallback themes	gnome-icon-theme, adwaita-icon-theme-legacy
Fonts	fonts-liberation (fonts-liberation2 on Debian 11 and 12)
Sounds	sound-theme-freedesktop
Help menu	debian-reference-common, debian-reference-en
Tray applets	network-manager-applet (network-manager-gnome on Debian 11 and 12), only if NetworkManager is installed; blueman only if BlueZ is, and only with Debian's panel
Debian logo	desktop-base, already part of a Debian desktop

Credits

The themes, icons, fonts, wallpapers and desktop settings are the work of Raspberry Pi Ltd and the Raspberry Pi desktop team. This project only installs their official packages on Debian and applies their settings. All artwork belongs to its authors and keeps its own licence (see /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright after installation).