Other than gnome, I don’t think there is any DE that restrict theming. You can go with Plasma, if you want to use GTK theme then there is Budgie, Cinnamon and Xfce.

Fun fact: Budgie on Solus used to be default using Plata-Noir which is material design inspired theme with pure black color scheme. It is not anymore becase the theme got unmaintained.

Since Gnome 40, you cannot change window theme via gnome-tweaks. You have to mess around with gtk.css file and manually edit it. I am sure there is easier way but I never looked into it.

Let it go bro. Just switch to Firefox & co. Or at least use it less for something that does not require ad-blocking.

I don’t agree with your assessment of Solus condition now. Granted I am biased as I am part of the staff. After the outage in early 2023, we have been going strong ever since. There are more contributors than ever. The bus factor problem has been mitigated by more people now have access to critical infrastructure.

Sure the old-heads are all gone but the future of Solus couldn’t be more clear than right now. eopkg was ported to python3 and now it is (finally) the default. We switch installer to calamares and in process of replacing our software center. Documentation also now looks better than ever. We already shed so many technical debts that is been going on for years, long before the outage. In the future the plan is for Solus to use AerynOS tooling and on their side development is going rapidly. You can read this all about this on our blog, devlog and forum.

I wrote the monthly “Contributor Roundup” in the forum, it summaries what the contributors been doing in the month. I would say we have pretty steady contribution rate and there is always new contributor coming in. If you have not tried Solus again after the outage, please do. You might be surprised on how things have changed and hopefully for the better. If you find anything that is not good, do not hesitate to tell us. We always appreciate a constructive feedback.

Anyway cheers!