So Ubuntu comes with the human theme. Brown everything. Want to change all that? Yet again I will bring you a how-to giving instructions to change your themes and customize them – and all this without touching the command line. Ubuntu is desktop ready, after all.

Here is our 5 step guide to changing your theme.

  1. Right-click on your desktop.
  2. Select “Change Desktop Background”
  3. A window will open, with the installed backgrounds. If you want you can choose a new background now.
  4. On the top, to the left of the “Background” tab is “Theme.”
  5. Click on theme. Now if you want a simple quick change you can just select one of the pre-installed ones and be done. Most of them are plain butt-ugly, so I customize my choices.

Customizing a Theme

So you selected a theme but Clearlooks just doesn’t cut it? Here’s how to customise your theme.

  1. Select a theme. (I have found Clearlooks to be the most customisable of the default themes.)
  2. On the bottom of the window click on “Customize”
  3. A new window will pop up with options to change “Controls”, “Colors”, “Window Border”, “Icons” and “Pointer.”
  4. Usually I stick with fooling around with colors, and if you are creative you can end up with some really bad-ass themes.

Here is a quick run-down of what every tab does:

  • Controls - Here you can change the look and feel of radio buttons, tick boxes and clickable buttons.
  • Colors – Surprisingly you change the colors of your theme here. Some themes do not allow changing colors.
  • Window Border - Here you can select the window border style you prefer.
  • Icons - Here you can set the style you want for the icons of your system. This influences how files and folders look.
  • Pointer - This is where you set the mouse-pointer style. Ubuntu comes with some nifty pre-installed mouse pointers. For some of them you can adjust the size of the pointer.

Installing New Themes.

Browse over to Ubuntu-Art.org. Browse around a bit. Lots of nifty themes huh? Well you are in luck, friend – installing them is as easy as:

  1. Download - Select one, and click on download. Usually it gets downloaded to your desktop.
  2. Drag and Drop – Right click on desktop, select “Change Desktop Background” click on “Theme” and drag your downloaded file into the window. A box will pop up asking if you want to install the theme, just say yes.
  3. Select – And you are done! A nifty new theme without breaking a sweat.

So there you have it – pimping your desktop without delving into anything advanced or major. Who said Ubuntu was not ready for the average joe?

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