According to an UDS session held a few days ago, it was decided to stay with stable GNOME for Ubuntu 13.04 and only update some components. 

This means Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail will ship with GNOME 3.6 for the most part, and not 3.8 (currently under development as 3.7.x), at least according to the current plans. But this might change.

Gtk+ 3.2 will let you run any application in a browser thanks to the new HTML5 gdk backend. That means you'll be able to run GIMP, Gedit, a video editor or whatever, remotely (or on the same computer), using a web browser.

This is still work in progress so not everything works yet (the keyboard input support, dnd or c&p) and also, it only works in Firefox 4 for now, but this is nevertheless amazing.

Check out the following video recorded by Alexander Larsson:

As you probably know, RGBA transparency was planned to be released with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx but it eventually didn't made it because of some issues such as various applications crashing and so on. RGBA transparency has been confirmed to be included in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat by Mark Shuttleworth at UDS-M but if you can't wait, you can try it using an Ubuntu PPA.


So why use RGBA transparency and not the transparency that comes with Compiz? Well, because RGBA doesn't make everything transparent the way Compiz does, but some elements such as the font and controls/buttons is still perfectly visible.


You could install RGBA support from a PPA since Ubuntu Karmic, but back then there were a lot of issues with it. I've tested the latest RGBA from the PPA and I didn't notice any crashes whatsoever (notes: with the default package from the PPA - no further tweaks; tested on an Nvidia graphics card, I cannot say how it will work on other graphics cards) with Totem, Firefox and so on, applications which used to crash when RGBA was enabled (but RGBA doesn't work for them). This means the RGBA support is now more stable or the source has been packaged better, but before adding the PPA, remember that there might still be bugs so use it at your own risk! I will include complete removal instructions just in case.

I found out from Penguin Inside about a small utility called GtkPerf which measures the performance of GTK themes.

You can install it in Ubuntu, using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gtkperf

GtkPerf is an application designed to test GTK+ performance. The point is to create common testing platform to run predefined GTK+ widgets (opening comboboxes, toggling buttons, scrolling text etc.) and this way define the speed of device/platform.

It seems that my favourite theme - New Wave - is probably the slowest GTK theme around (at least from the default and community themes).

Here are my tests results:

1. New Wave



Besides the GTK theme, New Wave also comes with:
- GUI New Wave Configurator,
- Emerald themes,
- Compiz-fusion settings,
- Second theme with dark menus,
- Firefox skin,
- Some metacity tweaks.
- Opera theme

Download New Wave | More info

2. Raysys QDark



Comes with GTK, Metacity and Emerald themes.

Download Raysys QDark

3. Black Rain



Download Black Rain

4. BlackFuzz-Ubuntu Edition



It comes with GTK, Metacity and Emerald Themes + optional: icons.

Download BlackFuzz-Ubuntu Edition

5. Minimum Suite v 0.3



The archive contains :

- Minimum Black GTK Theme
- Minimum White GTK Theme
- Minimum Black Contrasted GTK Theme
- Minimum White Contrasted GTK Theme

- XFCE Black Windeco
- XFCE White Windeco
- XFCE Black Contrasted Windeco
- XFCE White Contrasted Windeco

- Metacity Black Windeco
- Metacity White Windeco
- Metacity Black Contrasted Windeco
- Metacity White Contrasted Windeco

- Gradient wallpapers

Download Minimum Suite v 0.3

And a bonus

Ultimate Theme Pack:


(the screenshot consists of just one out of the many themes that come with Ultimate Theme Pack)

O/S's Supported: Hardy+ x86 & x64 UE 1.8+ (Debian untested)
Version: 0.0.4
Architecture supported: x64 / x86
File size: 399.7 MB (419,097,724 bytes)

Comes with:
[*] 3 Ultimate Edition usplashes (18 - 32 bit autodetects architecture)
[*] 34 Wallpapers
[*] 14 GDM logins
[*] 27 Icon sets
[*] 102 GTK / Metacity themes
[*] 49 Emerald themes
[*] 5 Cursor sets
[*] 2 Sound schemes

The pack comes in a Ubuntu .deb package.

Download Ultimate Theme Pack