It’s very frustrating to see a picture or video online featuring a really gorgeous Ubuntu\Gnome desktop, and have absolutely no idea how to get the same thing for yourself. Purely out of the goodness of my heart, and perhaps just a tiny little bit out of a desire to peacock, here’s a breakdown of my own desktop.
Wallpaper: I was searching on flickr for some images of DNA when I stumbled across this shot of a sculpture in Munich. Apparently when you see the it from the right angle it resembles a double helix. I love how the dark glossy metal complements the black of the top Gnome panel, and the orange-blue contrast is fantastic too. Here’s another great shot of the same sculpture.
Icons: black-white 2 gloss. There are several variations in the black-white family but this one fits in best with the black-glossy theme. For linux n00bs like me who struggled to add new icons the first time round, type sudo nautilus /usr/share/icons/ into a terminal then drag in the uncompressed folder called black-white_2-gloss. The icons will then be available in System > Preferences > Appearance > (select a theme) Customise > Icons.
Theme: ColorBit 2. To install, open System > Preferences > Appearance then just drag the compressed file into the ‘Theme’ box. Go to Customise > Colours then tone down all the blues to white\grays – this took a bit of trial and error on my computer and it’s largely a matter of taste how dark or light you want to take it.
Compiz: I’d love to use alpha-blur behind the semi-transparent windows but my graphics card just can’t hack it. Set the following opacity settings in System > Preferences > Advanced Desktop Effects Settings > General Options > Opacity Settings (if you can’t see Advanced Desktop Effects Settings, you don’t have the compiz settings manager installed; sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager):
class=Gnome-panel; opacity 82
class=Nautilus; opacity 90
class=File-roller; opacity 80
Go back to the CompizConfig Settings Manager main window, and go into Animations (it’s under Effects). Change the close effect to Burn with a duration of 50, and open to Skewer with a duration of 200.
Panels: To save space, I removed the bottom panel and put all the necessary bits and pieces up along the top of the desktop. Right click on panel objects to move or remove them; if you can’t, just untick the ‘Lock to Panel’ box and try again. Get rid of the ‘Show Desktop’ button and the ‘Switch Desktop’ applet – if you want to switch desktops, just drag a window off the side of the screen, or use <Ctrl> + <Alt> + an arrow key. Move the window list from the bottom panel up onto the top panel, and slide it along until it’s taking up the maximum amount of real estate. Now you can delete the naked bottom panel entirely.
That’s it! Don’t forget…the point of free software is that it’s free, so take advantage of that and use your imagination rather than copying my set-up exactly.
Nice desktop and thinks for the tips on setting opacity to the gnome-panel. I assume doing so is also setting the opacity to gnome-menu.
Landon
Very sweet – thx for sharing!
Thanks for some great tips on improving Ubuntu, making it look slick is one way Linux is finally going to get in some people doors. You are doing the ‘nux cumunity a great service.