Similar to this question but on Mint 18 and not exactly the same.

I can't find a way to get normal scroll bars on Mint 18. This problem started years ago when the GTK3 people decided to make scrollbars mobile-friendly, and unfortunately made them desktop-useless.

I'm talking about scrollbars dissapearing constantly, and the scrollbar arrows missing.

Is it possible to get rid of that behaviour? I can probably live without the arrows (though I'm having a very hard time missing them) but I cannot live with the idiotic you-don't-need-to-know-where-you-are-in-a-long-anything concept.

It's terrible in Xreader (where I can't see the scrollbar unless I mouse over it), in Thunar where I need to mouse over a pane to figure out whether there are more files/folders, and pretty much any other app that has a scrollbar.

I have a 24" 1920x1080 monitor, and I don't need to save 20 pixels (one percent of my screen width!!!) on a scrollbar. Really!

Anyway, sorry for the rant, the question (if anyone knows the answer) is how do I get a normal scrollbar back? Is it still possible?

I tried putting export GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 in my .bashrc or .profile but unexplicably it works for some apps and not others. I can run

GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 xreader

and the scrollbars start to work, but not if I start xreader via some graphical means.

You can turn off the scrollbar effect in System Settings > Effects

The arrows are a bit more complicated...
Edit the gtk-2.0/gtkrc file for the theme you are using.

ADD THIS LINE: GtkScrollbar::stepper-size = 18


GtkScrollbar::has-backward-stepper = 1
GtkScrollbar::has-forward-stepper = 1
GtkScrollbar::stepper-size = 18
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 18
GtkScrollbar::trough-border = 1
GtkScrollbar::activate-slider = 1
GtkScrollbar::min-slider-length = 24


Change these lines to 1, not 0
GtkScrollbar::has-backward-stepper = 1
GtkScrollbar::has-forward-stepper = 1



That is for the gtk2 programs. For gtk3 programs, edit the gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css file, at about line 1656

.scrollbar {
background-clip: padding-box;
-GtkRange-trough-border: 2;
-GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: 1;
-GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: 1;
-GtkRange-slider-width: 10;
-GtkScrollbar-min-slider-length: 30;
-GtkRange-stepper-spacing: 0;
-GtkRange-trough-under-steppers: 1;
}

Thank you TxLonghorn! Cinnamon was already so nice, but now I feel even happier with it!

I already had "Fade effect on Cinnamon scrollboxes" off, but I guess that does something different. What fixed it for the scrollbar was "Overlay scroll bars".

And the arrows came back with the text file changes you mentioned. I don't know why they didn't work when I followed the instructions in the other thread.

Too bad the arrows look unstyled in gtk2, but whatever, I'm keeping them anyway!