Desktop Themes

I work much with my computer and I think you work better if you feel at home in your working environment. That’s why I created a few nice little themes for the Gnome desktop.

The themes “Ubuntunion” and “UbuntuSun” have also been submitted as a community submission to the Ubuntu Artwork Team, that’s where their names come from.

What are Desktop Themes?

While Mac OS and Windows try to dictate a fixed desktop style, the possibility to freely theme all screen elements from the title bars to the buttons and the screen fonts is typical for most free desktop environments for Linux/Unix systems. The themes presented here have been created for the “Gnome” desktop environment.

Bad News

Unfortunately, in Gnome 3 the theming system has been changed and the old themes don’t work any more with this version. But if you’re interested in history (or still use Gnome 2) you still find them here. Maybe I also provide updated versions soon.

Ubuntunion

The idea behind Ubuntunion is to view a window as a unity in which elements like title bar, menu bar and toolbar melt with the other window contents and are all framed by a colourful border. To achieve this, there are no lines that split the whole window. Instead, the windows contain gradient lines. Also the outer frame is relatively thick to hold the window together.

Download Ubuntunion tar.gz, 30.2 KiB

ubuntunion 2 (orange)

As with Ubuntunion, the idea behind ubuntunion 2 is to view a window as a unity. The background now isn’t completely white by default and the frame isn’t as obtrusive as before. The general impression should now be more soft and elegant.

ubuntunion2 basics and orange theme tar.gz, 7.2 KiB

ubuntunion 2 (blue)

In contrast to its predecessor, the colors in ubuntunion 2 are freely customizable. As an example, I provide a pre-defined version with a blue border here. In order to use this version, the orange theme has to be installed before.