The Oxygen theme set was used by default for Plasma Workspaces in most Linux distributions, like Fedora,[1] Kubuntu,[2] and openSUSE.

It represents a break with the cartoonish look of previous K Desktop Environment 3 graphics and iconsets, adopting a more photo-realistic style.

One of the overall goals of Oxygen was to provide a nice looking desktop that did not distract the user, so the icons and themes use a desaturated color palette.

The name Oxygen came from a joke between the developers that they wanted to ”bring a breath of fresh air to the desktop”.

[8] The Oxygen Project aims to offer standard icons, guidelines and a style guide.