Themes

[Garrett LeSage]

On Mar 18, 2004, at 4:00 PM, Chadley Wilson wrote:

> This might be silly but where do I get themes for FC1 Gnome,
> Do I download GTK1 , 2 or metacity themes?
> What do I do with the downloaded files?
> Do I save the tarbals to the theme folder or do I extract them?
> Where do I get COOL themes?
>
> Anything else one needs to know about themeing??? :D


Chad,

You could always use Bluecurve, the theme we work on to try to bring 
you a nice and consistent interface across applications.  (:

Alternatively, we do ship with a few extra themes (including some 
alternative Bluecurve color schemes) which you can try out in the menu 
 > preferences > theme dialog.

Of course, customizing is fun too.  I'd suggest checking out 
http://art.gnome.org/ as it is the de facto resource for GNOME-related 
themes.  Many GTK+ themes include the necessary coverage for both 
version 1 and version 2 (although apps which use version 1.x are 
dwindling).

Your definition of "COOL" probably varies from others (naturally, as it 
is a matter of personal taste), but I'm pretty sure that you will find 
something at the GNOME artwork & theme site referenced above which 
suits your style, as there is a lot of varied content in the archive.  
I'm pretty sure there's something for everyone there.

Also worthy of mention is http://kde-look.org/ which, despite the name, 
also carries a good deal of non-KDE themes and artwork too (including a 
few GTK+ ones).

As far as installing themes is concerned, it's now a relatively simple 
process.  Right click on the file and choose "extract" or double-click 
and drag the folder to the desktop to uncompress the files within the 
archive.  Afterward, you should be able to drop the extracted files on 
the theme preferences dialog (menu > preferences > theme dialog).

Take note that some of the themes require additional engines to be 
installed.  Also, after installing, you may need to restart the theme 
preferences dialog.  In addition, if it is not a complete meta-theme, 
you may need to dig around in the "theme details" area to switch.

After installing, you can delete the tarball archives and the extracted 
folders from your desktop (or wherever you downloaded/extracted them 
to).

You can manually install your themes in the ~/.themes directory and new 
icon sets reside in ~/.icons.  Installing the new themes in the above 
manner makes the theme installation process a bit more transparent and 
easier, however.

Have fun making your system look exactly the way you want!  (:

Garrett