How to set up the Korla icon theme on Linux

Love the Apple look but want something fresh? Check out Korla, a beautiful, modern icon theme for Linux. Its design is very similar to that of macOS and borrows a lot of design choices from Mac-like Linux themes, yet it differentiates itself by adding in flat app icons (something Mac-like themes don’t do), and a variety of different folder color choices.

The Korla icon theme is available to Linux users for download via the project’s GitHub page. To get the latest release of Korla, you must have the Git tool installed.

Install Git

Installing the Git tool on Linux requires the Linux terminal. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the command-line instructions outlined below that match the Linux operating system you use.

Ubuntu

To install Git on Ubuntu Linux, use the following Apt command.

sudo apt install git

Debian

Using Debian Linux? Set up Git with the Apt-get command below.

sudo apt-get install git

Arch Linux

On Arch Linux, Git is installable via the following Pacman command.

sudo pacman -S git

Fedora

To install Git on Fedora Linux, use the following Dnf command.

sudo dnf install git

OpenSUSE

Git is available to all OpenSUSE Linux users. To install it, use the following Zypper command.

sudo zypper install git

Download Korla icon theme

After installing Git on your Linux computer, use the git clone command to download the latest release of the Korla icon theme.

git clone https://github.com/bikass/korla.git

Once the Korla icon theme is done downloading through Git, download the Korla Folders icon set.

git clone https://github.com/bikass/korla-folders.git

When both Korla and Korla Folders are done downloading, they’ll appear in “korla” and “korla-folders” in your home directory (~).

Alternatively, if using the Git tool isn’t your thing, you’ll be able to download both Korla and Korla Folders using wget.

wget https://github.com/bikass/korla-folders/archive/master.zip -O korla-folders.zip

wget https://github.com/bikass/korla/archive/master.zip -O korla.zip

Unzip both “korla.zip” and “korla-folders.zip” with the commands below.

Note: To use the unzip commands outlined below, you must have the unzip tool installed. For more information on how to install unzip, head over to Pkgs.org.

unzip korla.zip unzip korla-folders.zip

Install Korla icons

The Korla icon theme can be set up on a Linux PC in two different ways. The first way involves installing the icons for a single-user so that only the user that sets up the icon theme can have access to it. The second way is by setting it up system-wide so that every single user on the Linux system can have access to the Korla icon theme. In this guide, we will go over both installation methods.

Single-user

To set up the Korla icon theme on Linux as a single-user, start by using the mkdir command to create a new folder with the name of “.icons” in the home directory (~) of the current user.

mkdir -p ~/.icons

After creating the new “.icons” folder, move the Korla folder into the directory with the mv command.

mv korla ~/.icons

mv korla-folders ~/.icons

Did you download the icons with the wget command? If so, the folder names are different than the ones in the commands above. Try these instead:

mv korla-master ~/.icons

mv korla-folders-master ~/.icons

Once the icon files are placed in the “.icons” folder in the home directory (~), the Korla icon theme is installed as a single-user.

System-wide

To install the Korla icon theme on Linux system-wide, start by gaining root access using the sudo -s command.

sudo -s

Now that the terminal shell has root access use the mv command to install the Korla icon theme into the icon directory.

mv korla /usr/share/icons/

mv korla-folders /usr/share/icons/

If you downloaded the Korla icon files through the wget download command, and not the git clone tool, the commands outlined above will not work. You must instead use these commands to place the Korla icons in the correct directory.

mv korla-master /usr/share/icons/

mv korla-folders-master /usr/share/icons/

When the icon files are placed in the system’s icon directory, the Korla icon theme is installed system-wide.

Enable Korla icon theme on Linux

Korla is set up on Linux, but the system won’t use it until it’s set as the default icon theme. To set Korla as the default icon theme on your Linux PC, open up “System Settings,” and make your way to the “themes” or “appearance” settings. Once there, switch the icon theme to “Korla.”

Having some issues setting the Korla icon theme as the default on your Linux PC? We can help! Look through the links below for the desktop environment you use to learn all about how to change icon themes.