6 Best LXQt, KDE icon themes for Linux

There are literally thousands of icon themes around for Your Linux desktop, but most of them are designed for GTK+ based desktop environments like Gnome, Cinnamon, MATE, Unity, XFCE, LXDE and more.

Few of the works well on Qt based desktops like KDE, LXQt or Lumina desktop, few looks horrible, but most of them lacks important icons for Qt based applications, mostly file manager navigation icons, action icons and MIME type icons.

Best LXQt or KDE icons

As both KDE and LXQt are based on Qt, any icon theme designed for KDE should also work fine with LXQt. That's also true for other Qt based applications, if a proper Qt theming tool like Qt5ct is used.

There's many icon theme, but choosing a proper one is important. Icons should be contrasting with the background color to make them clearly visible.

That's crucial for toolbar navigation icons and button icons, if these icons are not recognizable, then it kills the usability.

So, lets find out some pleasing LXQt/KDE icons that works well with Qt apps.

1. Pop

It's from the popular Linux PC/laptop brand System76, a well designed flat icon theme.

System76 developed this icon theme for their Pop OS. However as it's open source, could be used on any Linux distro.

Here's the Official github repo for Pop icon theme, https://github.com/pop-os/icon-theme

You can install it either by manually downloading the icon theme and copying it to the ~/.icons directory, or use the PPA on Ubuntu and AUR on ArchLinux.

So, to install it on Ubuntu or any other Ubuntu based distro like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, use the command listed below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76/pop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pop-icon-theme

2. Antu

Antu is a clean and flat looking icon theme for virtually all desktop environments, looks stunning for it's vivid use of color.

I've not fount any missing app icon till now, and all the action icons and emblems looks pretty polished.

Antu also provides some other KDE stuffs, two KWin decorations and two plasma themes, anyway they are great too.

Github repo for Antu > https://github.com/lucasnota/Antu-U .

Installation: For local installation through command line, You can use those commands bellow, assuming you've already installed git .

cd ~/

mkdir -p .icons

git clone https://github.com/lucasnota/Antu-U.git

mv ~/Antu-U/Antu/ ~/Antu-U/AntuDark/ ~/.icons

rm -rf  ~/Antu-U

3. Papirus

Papirus icons are inspired by Google's material design, and looks pretty polished, well, the folder icons looks a bit creepy. Here the link to Papirus github repo.

Papirus pack not only provide a kde icon theme, it intended  to change the look and feel of entire KDE desktop.

If you are using Ubuntu or Archlinux, installation is easy, a PPA is available for Ubuntu and AUR packages for Archlinux.

Installation on Ubuntu 16.04 : Add the PPA and update software repository,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:varlesh-l/papirus-pack

sudo apt-get update

Now Install the papirus pack,

sudo apt-get install papirus-pack-kde5

This will also install many KDE related components, you have to be a little hacky to install only the icon theme. Either clone the github repo or download the icons only deb package.

4. Emerald

Emerald is a semi-flat looking icon theme for  all desktop environments, fits well with Qt based apps. It's inspired by the Breeze icon theme of KDE 5.

You can download the icon theme from DevianArt, aft er downloading extract the 7zip archive to ~/.icons or /usr/share/icons to acctually use them.

5. Lüv

Lüv is another flat icon theme for both Qt and GTK+ based desktops, looks neat and clean, it still needs some more polishing. Github repo > https://github.com/NitruxSA/luv-icon-theme .

Installation: To the latest Luv icon theme from github, you can use those command bellow,

cd ~/

mkdir -p ~/.icons

git clone https://github.com/NitruxSA/luv-icon-theme.git

mv ~/luv-icon-theme/Lüv* ~/.icons/

rm -rf ~/luv-icon-theme/

6. Faience

Bored with flat icon themes ? Faience is here, an icon set with rich design and glassy look.

Though it was designed for Gonome 3 , but works fine with KDE or LXQt, this icon theme depends on popular Faenza icon theme.

Installation: As this icon theme is a bit old, you may need to download the deb package and manually install it. Here the latest download link for the deb package.

Install it with dpkg after downloading and run apt-get install -f to resolve dependency related issues.

sudo dpkg -i faience-icon-theme_0.5.1_all.deb

sudo apt-get install -f

Conclusion

So that's it, a comprehensive list of LXQt and KDE icons , though it's missing other popular icon themes like Numix, but it's merely a personal choice, as I'm not great fan of those circular icons.

Hope you enjoyed those icons and let me know your experience/suggestion through the comments.