Several Ubuntu Themes

My readomatic directed me to a post by Anurag Arora, in which he gives detailed instructions on how to install several Ubuntu themes by Francois Vogelweith. Since Mr. Vogelweith himself writes in French, these English-language instructions are invaluable.

There is one spot in the instructions which might confuse the unwary, though. In the line

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0×1781bd45c4c3275a34bb6aec6e871c4a881574de

you need two hyphens before the words “recv” and “keyserver” (first occurrence). This isn’t necessarily obvious when reading the small font the line is written in.

These themes are well worth the effort of adding the extra repository. The files are large, but that’s because they contain a lot of extras you often don’t get in a theme download. For example, each theme comes with its own set of icons (though they’re mostly similar except for the colors). They also come with matching desktop backgrounds and GDM (login screen) themes.

I tried a few of these themes before settling on Balanzan (screenshot below):

Balanzan fits in well with the standard Ubuntu color scheme. That means if you don’t like the icons that come with the theme, it will work well with the default Human icons as well. I haven’t had that problem, but I can tell that the alternate icons may not fit everyone’s taste.

Two of the other themes, Bamboo Zen and Aquadreams, look like they would make good themes for Linux Mint if I ever get around to messing around with the new version (Linux Mint 7 Gloria).

New Theme

I haven’t played around with desktop themes since upgrading to Jaunty, but the other day, I found one that triggered the itch to experiment. It’s a vaguely Mac-flavored dark theme called Squaredoid-Black. However, this theme doesn’t come with window controls (GNOME’s name for toolbar colors, apparently). So I ended up downloading BlackWinter again in order to get darker toolbars. The next step was to find another dark wallpaper, since the old BlackWinter wallpaper was deleted when I did my Jaunty install. I ended up with something called Aurora, which looks like a rip-off of the default Mac OS desktop background. The resulting combination looks like this:

Desktop with Aurora Wallpaper

And here’s how the custom theme (which I’ve dubbed “SquareWinter”) looks in an actual window:

Picture Window in "SquareWinter"

And it looks like, as any fan of Halloween will tell you, the orange of the default human icons mixes well with black.

Allegre

And I’m back to blogging about desktop themes again. I tried a new one called Allegre. It comes in two versions, all downloadable from the linked page. The version I used is called Allegre Ubuntu and is designed to look good with the default Human icon set. Here’s a screenshot:

Allegre Human

I like the menu bar, window borders, and window controls (maximize, close, etc.), which are based on Dust. Overall, this theme looks like a just slightly cooler version of the default Human theme, without overwhelming you with orange. The bolded menu bar headings are also a nice touch.

Note About Firefox and Desktop Themes

While messing around with a couple of Firefox themes, I discovered something about the Firefox add-ons dialog. When you select the default theme, it will picture the default theme that comes with Ubuntu (Tango in the case of Intrepid Ibex).

However, when you restart with the “default” theme, it will display the desktop theme, including icons. While I figured this is how it would behave, this behavior may be confusing to some users.

Hydroxygen + Shiki-Human Semicompact

While I was messing around with themes, I decided to try out the hydroxygen icons (customized to go along with the Human color scheme) with a theme called Shiki-Human Semicompact.  I think it turned out pretty well:

And I swear, one of these days I’ll blog about something besides themes and icons. In fact, with the start of a new quarter, I’ll probably be testing out OpenOffice’s ability to read Office 2007 files and ranting about the advantages of Linux compared to the Windows programs I’ll have to use for school.

Ubuntu-Art

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been a big fan of Gnome-Look, a website that features themes, wallpapers, and widgets for the GNOME desktop, Ubuntu’s default graphic interface. However, poking around in the top navigation bar on Gnome-Look has revealed an even better site for my needs: Ubuntu-Art. Basically, Ubuntu-Art is just like Gnome-Look, except tailored for Ubuntu. That means you don’t have to sort through wallpapers with logos for other Linux distributions like Debian or Fedora to get to things you might actually use.

The way I see it, Gnome-Look is great for people who use minor distros without the level of specific third-party support that Ubuntu and other popular distros have. It’s also good for people who run more than one Linux distro on their computers. But for people who only use Ubuntu, Ubuntu-Art is a better, more targeted choice.

That previous post I linked to didn’t get into the value of these kinds of sites for Linux users. According to The Linux Life, changing the desktop theme is much easier in Linux than in Windows. I’m inclined to agree, since I never even figured out how to change the desktop theme in either XP or Vista.* A source of alternate wallpapers is also really handy. The default Ibex wallpaper of 8.10 isn’t bad, but it’s nice to know there are options if brown either isn’t your color or doesn’t go with your favorite theme. The GNOME desktop comes with tons of customization options, and sites like Ubuntu-Art provide the resources to take full advantage of this customizability.

*For the newbies, in Ubuntu you can see the themes available on your computer by clicking Appearance under System –> Preferences. Your current theme’s square will be outlined in a solid-colored square, and its title will be highlighted. To change the theme, simply click on another theme’s square.

New Desktop Theme

I read the Gnome-Look RSS feed religiously to find various extensions and themes for the GNOME desktop. Lately I’ve been experimenting with a new desktop theme once every couple of weeks on average. So it was about time for me to pick another one. I stumbled across one with the unwieldy name Gotchione. I liked the look of the panels, so I downloaded it. I found that the dark panels look good with the wallpaper from the BlackWinter theme:

Gotchione with BlackWinter wallpaper

I also went through the trouble of downloading and installing the hydroxygen icon set used by the theme’s author. This required a lot of messing around with the terminal, especially to substitute the Ubuntu logo for the GNOME desktop logo at the top left of the screen. It took about three attempts for it to actually take. Furthermore, the installation instructions included commands to get rid of files that weren’t installed. It looks like the maintainers of the icon set didn’t bother to update their instructions between versions.

Anyway, here’s how the hydroxygen icons look in Firefox:

Firefox in Gotchione

I’m not sure how I feel about the icons yet, though they don’t seem too offensive. Anyway, this ends today’s exercise in desktop narcissism.