Ubuntu LTS comes with an orange look by default. Some people like it, some don’t. It is not hard to customize Gnome to look however you want it to look.
Teenage Tantrums has a very informative post about it. I want to elaborate just a bit. I have been implementing Blubuntu since I started using Ubuntu last summer.
Over time, there have been changes to the look that I use, especially as more themes emerge from gnome-look.org.
Currently in Dapper, we see many improvements in the Ubuntu UI. One such improvement is the new Human icon package. Another is the window decoration.
The problem that I personally have, is the use of the color orange. Just as with past versions of Ubuntu, which used brown, I am not exactly satisfied with the look. Some people love it, and I say, whatever floats your boat is good enough. However, my personal preference is blue.
Since Teenage Tantrums has made a post about Bluebuntu, I have decided to also share with the world, what my Bluebuntu desktop looks like.
First of all, we have the HumanBlue with gtk1 GTK 2.x Theme/Style.
Here are some samples:
Next, we want to have blue icons to match. Now, we really like the new look of the new Human icons, but again, they’re orange.
There is a set of blue icons with the new Human look (only blue, not orange).
I’m talking about the HumanAzul icon theme.
Take a look:
Next, we have the Tango Metacity Theme, which give the windows a nice rounded, blue border.
It looks like this:
So download all three of those files:
The installation of these are very simple. All you have to do is drag and drop the files into the theme preferences dialog, one by one. For each file, you must wait until the prompt indicates that the file has been installed.
To open the theme preferences dialog, click System–>Preferences–>Theme.
The window should look just like this photo on the left.
Now you must select your customized theme. On the theme preferences dialog, select Theme Details. Select the newly installed theme customizations.
You can also use the Winamp 5 Skin For XMMS to skin XMMS or my personal favorite, BMP (Beep Media Player).
This theme will work for either XMMS or BMP. Insert the file into ~/.xmms/Skins for XMMS, or ~/.bmp/Skins for BMP.
Download it here.
A theme for Firefox that matches Tango is beautiful.
sudo apt-get install firefox-themes-ubuntu
It will look similar to this picture below:
To top it off, we can make the Gnome Panels transparent, and give them a white text color. The hack is easy.
Any blue wallpaper will do just fine.
Here is what my desktop looks like.
Ain’t it perdy?
I hope that this information is useful to anyone using Ubuntu and/or Gnome.
I have other Ubuntu hacks as well. Stay up to date with these, by subscribing to my Ubuntu tag feed.
edit: Check out Blubuntu Part II, for my own artwork contributions to Blubuntu.
12 Comments
Nice to see that I’m not alone in my campaign for making Ubuntu Blue…
Quite nice! Kind of OS X-ish. Thanks for sharing!
You are welcome Marc. Thanks for visiting!
Hey teen, you are not alone, my friend. I like what you’ve done, on your blog, by the way.
Nice to see Screenshots in Spanish :p
Long life to Azul (Blue)
thanks you
Hello,
This is exactly what I was serarching for. Thank you, and congrat.
This would be very nice for a default, soft on the eyes too!
I like the blue, despite it being the most common color on desktops.
Why not just use Kubuntu? I prefer KDE anyway
It seems the button frames of items listed in “system - administration” are not correctly displayed. Does anyone else have the similar problem?
@Jasper
Yes, I had the same problem. The problem is that the theme is only installed for the current user and not for root (I think). I fixed it by running “sudo gnome-appearance-properties” and installing everything again (by dragging the .zip files into the theme preferences dialog).
howd you get the top panel so that it doesnt extend to the edges of the screen. Its so cool. i could finally get rid of buggy awn.
3 Trackbacks
[...] Luckily, I stumbled on the converting Ubuntu to blue article, which sets out to solve this very problem. Essentially it just presents links to Ubuntu to Blubuntu , it’s a zip and Blubuntu which elaborates even more. In addition, I also found Down with Brown - Changing Login / Splash Screen on Ubuntu Dapper Drake (6.06) [...]
[...] Teenage Tantrums somewhat started the most recent hype in Ubuntu customization, going blue. Soon followed by Brent Ross’s post. [...]
[...] Earlier this year, back in the dog days of summer, I wrote a post about Blubuntu, or how to make your Ubuntu desktop look blue. To my surprise, it received heavy traffic, and accolades from many around the net. [...]