What’s Hotter Than Hot?

KDE has never been a dog, but if there is one thing in life that is better than a beautiful woman, it’s one with no clothes. And that’s precisely what we’re going to do with KDE today.

This guide will show you how to install and use the Oxygen-transparent theme for KDE 4.10 in Kubuntu 12.10.

What Is Oxygen-transparent?

Oxygen-transparent is a spin on the default Oxygen theme for KDE 4 the makes the widget background transparent and blurred, not entirely unlike the effect provided by Aero in Windows 7. Oxygen is already an attractive theme that’s nice to look at, but this piece of software simply takes it to the next level.

Let’s Begin

Install the required dependancies. These packages with give you every thing you need to build software from source, and git, which will allow you to download source code directly from github to your working directory.

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake kdelibs5-dev 
kdebase-workspace-dev libxrender-dev libx11-dev git

Now, let’s clone the archive locally so we can build it.

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/oxygen-transparent

Now, let’s get into the directory and get to work.

cd oxygen-transparent

Now, let’s run the setup script. Unlike our guide for KDE 4.8, oxygen-transparent now has several branches. You can read more about that here, but for now, let’s install the master branch, because that one is compatible with KDE 4.10.

./oxygen-setup.pl --branch master

Now, move into the build directory created by the script we just ran.

cd build/

Lastly, do the following to make & install.

sudo make && make install

Provided there were no errors, you should be able to use this immediately. Just open up System Settings and go to Application Appearance. Click Style and find Widget Style. Select Oxygen Transparent and click Apply at the bottom.

Now, click on Configure. Lower your Opacity to a level that’s comfortable for you to look at all the time. Hit OK as the bottom of the window, and you are all done?

This also install a window decoration too, so you’ll need to change that if you want the full package.  Other than that, the only thing that this theme is missing is an equivalent for GTK.  All of your GTK apps will still be plain-jane Oxygen and follow whatever color-scheme you set for it.