GNOME-Colors: Consistence and Elegance For GNOME Desktops

Published on July 14, 2009 in Eye Candy by Rami Taibah

gnomecolors

Lets face it, the default GNOME desktop isn’t the easiest desktop on the eye. While Ubuntu’s desert brown is actually an eye sore, other distros like Mint and Fedora have done better jobs in theming their desktops. But still most users aren’t content with default desktops and usually tweak around their themes via gnome-look.org among others.

Most Linux beginners have a hard time getting everything on gnome-look.org to work, while veterans might not have the time to scour the web and build every bit of their desktops to their taste. Luckily, there are many automated options for system-wide theming out there. One of these options is GNOME-Colors.

Enter GNOME-Colors

The GNOME-Colors is a project that aims to make the GNOME desktop as elegant, consistent and colorful as possible.

The current goal is to allow full color customization of themes, icons, GDM logins and splash screens. There are already six full color-schemes available; Brave (Blue), Human (Orange), Wine (Red), Noble (Purple), Wise (Green) and Dust (Chocolate).

GNOME-Colors is mostly inspired/based on Tango, GNOME, Elementary, Tango-Generator and many other open-source projects.

Installing GNOME-Colors will provide you three things:

  • Arc-Colors GDM Themes (login screens) and Wallpapers
  • Shiki-Colors GNOME Themes. These are colored themes for the whole desktop
  • GNOME-Colors Icons

Here are two screenshots on my own laptop and GDM login screens (not mine, still have to figure out how to capture a login screen :D ). Of course the bar in the bottom has nothing to do with GNOME-Colors. Its just AWN, which we will probably cover more about later:

Gnome-Colors-Wise

GNOME-Colors-Noble

gdmboth

Installing GNOME-Colors

Like most apps, you can either use the GUI or the command line to install GNOME-Colors. I’m gonna opt for the command line, its easier and quicker to implement and describe! You are on your own if you want GUI :)

If you are on an a Debian based system like Ubuntu, you will need to add the PPA to apt-get:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gnome-colors.list
Then add the repos (I am doing Jaunty here, change Jaunty to your corresponding Ubuntu version)
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Next you will need to add the keys, copy and paste this into your terminal:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2d79f61be8d31a30
Update your repositories:
sudo apt-get update
Install:
sudo apt-get install gnome-colors shiki-colors arc-colors

You should now go to:
System --> Preferences --> Appearance

Choose any of the shiki-colors, change your wallpaper under background, and for your GDM login screen go to:

System --> Administration --> Login Window

Conclusion

You can spend days on end customizing your favorite distro, its always fun! But unfortunately most of us don’t have the time and need to get things done. GNOME-Colors is one of the ways (we will cover others later) of getting cool, consistent, and elegant desktops with a few simple commands.

About Rami Taibah

Rami Taibah the founder of The Linuxologist and a self proclaimed geek and Linux aficionado. This fall, he will be pursuing an MIMS degree at UC Berkeley, California. You can follow him on Twitter @rtaibah.

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  • Yeah the only other "native" way to capture the login screen would be have some screen shot service load at post and binded to a keyboard short cut. This as far as I know does not exist and you would have to set up paths and such for images to be save prior to rebooting or just loading the module.

    I am speaking solely on what I googled about how to capture the screen before the desktop loads. Of course a VM with a minimal install will accomplish this alot easier.
  • Great tut! Never heard about such a great themes. I am still falling in love with Ubuntu.

    Thanks for your work. Keep it up!

  • Thanks DJ, glad you like it. It is awesome indeed despite that the changes it does are very minimal. But it goes a long way....

    And thanks for reading :)
  • Great post Rami. This is some great looking stuff. I have installed it on all my boxes
  • Indeed Chris, these are great. Its seems so simple, but it does greatly enhance a Linux desktop...
  • Awesome. It feels prettier already (and properly individual, not pretty by copying Apple ...)
  • You, sir, have managed to make Gnome look stunningly beautiful... I am feeling inspired. Time to make it an amoebaOS theme!
  • Murtadh
    In my system "jaunty" the OpenPGP key you provided didn't work giving me an error (...GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net jaunty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 2D79F61BE8D31A30)

    but I made small modification, and now it works:

    sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2d79f61be8d31a30

    BTW the Login Window, is not in the Preferences, it's in Administration :P

    System –> Administration –> Login Window

    Thanks
  • Thanks for the update. I am sure other readers will find this useful

    Oh and fixed! ;)
  • Now I see from where Mint Gloria 7 took the nice default desktop theme.
  • robenroute
    Have a look at http://francois.vogelweith.com He's got an excellent collection of very usable themes. His themes beat Ubuntu's by a long shot, and then some...
  • The funny thing, I was using these for quite sometime. Wanted to write about them but couldn't remember where I got them from. Thanks for reminding me....

    They are quite spectacular.
  • I believe you can make screenshots of the login screen far easier using gdmflexiserver --xnest. No need for a virtual machine.
  • Will it work on Ubuntu Netbook Remix (9.04)?
  • I don't see why not? Only one way to find out :) I don't think it would screw up anything
  • arijit
    You can capture screen shot of a login screen if you run the distro in virtualbox. my 2 cents.

    Thanks for your useful tip regarding this project.
  • Hmm thanks arijit, never occurred to me :)
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