Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

The newest version of Ubuntu (11.10 – Oneiric Ocelot), does not come with GNOME Shell installed by default.  Instead, Ubuntu ships with the Unity 3D interface (or 2D, if your graphics card isn’t up to snuff).  You can install GNOME Shell easily enough, however.  Simply open a Terminal and type sudo apt-get install gnome-shell and in a couple minutes you’ll be able to launch a GNOME Shell session when you log into your computer.

However, simply having GNOME Shell installed doesn’t mean you’ll be able to change themes.  For the longest time, changing the look and feel of Ubuntu was as simple as heading over to gnome-look.org and finding a theme you liked.  Download it to your computer and place the theme folder inside the /usr/share/themes folder, then head to the Appearance preference panel and make the change.

Things aren’t that simple anymore.  In fact, GNOME Shell, by default, comes with no theme options, but thanks to the Linux community, it’s something you can do, even if it takes a bit of work.  Here’s how to do it in Ubuntu.

First, open up the Terminal.

Now, to ensure you have GNOME Shell installed, repeat the sudo apt-get install gnome-shell command from before.

Once you’ve done this, you could logout of your current session and log back into the GNOME Shell, but for now, stay in Unity, while we add a couple more requirements.  We’ll need the gnome-shell-extensions-common and gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme packages, which aren’t a part of the default Ubuntu repositories.  So we’ll need to add them from the GNOME3 personal package archive (PPA).  You can accomplish this in two ways.  You could add the entire PPA if you want (which would overwrite certain default programs, such as Gedit, with newer versions, or you could go to the PPA in your web browser and download the specific packages you need.

To add the entire PPA, type sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 into the Terminal.

Hit Enter when asked, then type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade to first update your software lists with the new packages and then upgrade the installed software on your computer (a necessary step as so many GNOME-related packages will be upgraded with the addition of the GNOME3 PPA.

Finally, type sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-common gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme to add the two required packages.

Instead of using the PPA (which will keep your packages-to-date, but will also update packages you might not want updated), you could navigate to the PPA’s page and click the blue “View package details” link to see all available packages.  Next, scroll ahead until you see gnome-shell-extensions, click that link and then scroll down until you find the two packages mentioned above, being sure to grab the ones for Oneiric.  Those packages can currently be downloaded from this link and this link.

Once you have downloaded them, the two packages can be installed via your favorite package manager, such as the Ubuntu Software Center, GDebi, or dpkg from the Terminal.

You’ll also want to install GNOME Tweak Tool, which is a standard part of the Ubuntu repositories, by typing sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool into the Terminal.

Once installed, go ahead and logout of your current session.  When you log back in, choose GNOME (not Ubuntu).  You’ll eventually be faced with the standard GNOME Shell Desktop using the default theme, which looks like this when searching or switching between programs or desktops.

To get our newly-installed user theme extension activated, open up GNOME Tweak Tool.

Click the Shell Extensions option in the sidebar, then click the slider to turn on the User Themes Extension.

Now, from the user menu in the upper right corner of the screen, log out (and then log back into the same GNOME session).  This will ensure that the user themes extension is fully loaded.

Once you’re logged back in, go ahead and start up GNOME Tweak Tool once more, this time going to the Theme interface.  By this time, you’ll want to have downloaded at least one new GNOME Shell theme; two common locations to find themes are gnome-look.org or Deviantart.com.

Click either of the links to be taken to the website’s GNOME Shell theme area.  For this article, we downloaded a few themes, but will be showing off Smooth Inset, found here.

Once you’ve downloaded your theme, leave it like it is (don’t unzip it).  GNOME Tweak Tool will be able to install it just as it is (in most cases).  To install a theme, click the button (that says “None”) beside your list of available themes.

Now, navigate to where you downloaded your theme and select it.  You should very quickly see a little yellow flash (not shown) that tells you the theme has been installed successfully. Once the theme is installed, you can select it from the pop-up menu.

What kinds of themes are available?  We already showed the standard look for GNOME Shell.  Here’s what the Shell interface looks like when using Smooth Inset.

These themes aren’t quite the same as “themes” in the old-style GNOME Desktop.  They don’t change your window title bar or buttons or the look of your windows; they theme everything else, from pop-ups to the top panel’s look and feel.  For instance, here’s the default look of the calendar that appears when you click the clock.

Here’s the same calendar; the only change made was the addition of the Smooth Inset theme.

As you can see, a lot can be done with themes.  You can keep the standard theme, which gives the Desktop an overall dark look and feel, or brighten it up a bit with something completely different.  It’s unfortunate that adding themes requires all these steps, but in the end, we think the flexibility and customization options are well worth the effort.