Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

ambiance theme

There is currently a lot of work going on to improve the Ubuntu light themes: Ambiance and Radiance. Unfortunately all these changes are not even available in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

But if you want to install the Ubuntu latest light themes, I've created a PPA with packages for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Read on!


To mention only a few of the changes: there is a new theme called "Ambiance Dark" (but these variation of the theme seems to have a bug in Nautilus) (Update: Ambiance Dark has been renamed to Eclipse), the Ambiance Metacity uses new buttons and many many fixes:

ambiance new metacity buttons

Also, the Ubuntu Light Themes now use both Murrine and Equinox engines (Equinox available in the PPA).


Unfortunately Radiance didn't get new Metacity buttons:

radiance



How to install the latest Ubuntu Light Themes


Please remember these are testing packages so there might be bugs!!!


To install the latest Ubuntu Light Themes (Ambiance, Eclipse and Radiance), use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/light-themes && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-equinox light-themes gtk2-engines-murrine



In the same PPA I've also uploaded some amazing Equinox themes:

equinox theme
(Equinox theme)


equinox radiance theme
(Equinox Radiance Glass theme)



You can install them using the following command:
sudo apt-get install equinox-theme


If you only want to install the Equinox themes but keep the original Light Themes, you can either manually download the .deb file from HERE (remember to download both the Equinox themes and the Equinox GTK engine) or use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/light-themes && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install equinox-theme gtk2-engines-equinox

Then go to System > Administration > Software Sources, on the "Other sources" tab and remove the line that says "http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/light-themes/ubuntu lucid main".

Then:
sudo apt-get update

Reverting the changes (use the original Light Themes and Murrine Engine)


To revert the changes made by the PPA and use the Ubuntu Light themes from the official Ubuntu repositories (as well as the latest Murrine engine), you can use PPA Purge:
wget https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/webupd8/+files/ppa-purge_0.2.6~webupd8~lucid_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i ppa-purge_0.2.6~webupd8~lucid_all.deb
sudo ppa-purge ppa:webupd8team/light-themes


Update: these are not official after all, this has been confirmed on the Ayatana mailing list (I can't find the link to that post right now)!