Filling my Technological Void|Learning to Adapt to new Technology…… The Hard Way.

Recently I’ve noticed quite a few asking for methods changing the looks of the Ubuntu Desktop to make it a bit more appealing. Personally I don’t like the brown theme Ubuntu has going on at the moment But its really not hard to change anyway . Well I’m going to show you how you can customize your desktop to get it to look a bit better ot at least give you shove in the right direction.Heres two of my desktops that I customized.

I’ve created a small checklist that should guide you during the process. Before starting I recommend creating a folder called “Eye Candy” or whatever so you can save all the stuff you download for your customizing purposes.

Checklist

1. First of all you will need a nice Wallpaper. I usually get my Wallpapers off Magazines that I buy each month or off the internet from sites like www.deviantart.com , www.interfacelift.com , www.hdwallpapers.net. Once you have the wallpaper downloaded you can install it simply by Right clicking your Desktop and then selecting Change Background. As shown below:

Now ytou can click on the Add button to add the wallpaper if its not already in the list of available ones . Once the wallpaper becomes available you can just select it as shown below.

2. Now that you have a good wallpaper its time we get a good theme to go with that. For themes I always go to www.gnome-look.org . Any of the GTK ones should be just fine for your needs. I downloaded the Moomex one for now. You can install the theme by going to System > Preference > Appearance. Open the Theme tab and then select the Install button and browse to the folder you have the Theme placed in. now you should be able to see the newly added theme in the list. Select it and it should apply the Theme to your Ubuntu Desktop.

3. Since you are at www.gnome-look.org you might as well download an Icon Set of your choice. I have quite a few downloaded. Please note that based on the number of icons within the icon set the file size for the download will change drastically. There are Icon sets ranging from anywhere between 5 MB to 40 MB. However the larger ones usually have most of the common icons that a person needs. I usually use Black and White, nuoveXT and Buuf-Deuce icon set. Once you have downloaded the appropriate icon set you can install it by performing the same steps that you performed for installing the Theme. once you have installed the Icon set you can select it by going to System > Preference > Appearance > Theme > Customize > Icons and select the respective icon set you want.

Now comes the hard part.

4. You need to choose whether you want to use gDesklets , Screenlets or Conky. if you want any of these that is. Each has their own ups and downs. You can find the respective tutorials for each given below.

gDesklets
Screenlets
Conky

What you use is basically your call. Usually I choose conky cause its pretty minimalistic although you can monitor a plethora of things from it. However in one of the screenshots you can see that I’m using a combination of gDesklets as well as Screenlets. You can download various other Screenlets from www.gnome-look.org .

5. Avant Window Navigator or otherwise commonly known as AWN. In both screenshots you can see the bar at the bottom of the screenshots. I love this dock bar and althought it isn’t actually a stable release I have yet to run into a single problem with it. You can find a very descriptive tutorial of how to use and install AWN here.

At this point you’re pretty much done. There’s other things you could play with like Emerald , Compiz etc. However I think that this much should satisfy more than enough folks.

I’ve also included a link to the main guide I learned quite a lot on the customization process in Ubuntu.
DarkstarUbuntu Customization Guide - I have only two words for this…. “Freaking Awesome”. Definitely a must read for anyone who wants to customize his desktop to great lengths and he has described the process very well unlike me (heh, I’m much more of a slacker).

Also performing the same steps as above I managed to get a new desktop which is shown below.