How to Install Elementary Luna Theme in Gnome 3 (Shell)?

Gnome 3 or also known as Gnome Shell brought a lot of GUI changes when comparing with the existing 2x version. The changes are also massive and was something very similar that happened with the Gnome 1x to 2x "switch".

Those days (1x versions) Gnome used to give users a lot of features and options to customized the desktop (even better than KDE in features) but with the introduction of the 2x "jump" a huge list of those GUI configuration options were removed. So in a way, the Gnome 2x desktop was totally different one to its predecessor. 

Just like that the recently introduced Gnome 3 also brought a total re-design of the desktop GUI and computing in general thus just like with the 1->2 migration, it received a lot of criticism (both negative and positive ones, yikes!).

Anyhow, sorry about the "short rambling, introduction", if you're one of the fans of the new Gnome 3 apart from all those issues, and I gotta admit Gnome developers always had an excellent (highly relative) ability to provide good looking themes (although very little customization available) but after using it for months, if you're already bored with the themes that comes with it and looking for something that looks beautiful, then perhaps the Elementary Luna theme for the Gnome Shell might get you interested :).

Main features...

*. This is a complete theme suit but you'll have to get an icon pack a wallpaper separately to the original shell theme (links below). But of course you can skip the icons and the wallpaper if you like as well.

*. Comes with a bit darker colors and my personal favorite, the awesome Blue color! :D. 

*. There's a separate lighter version of the theme is also available if you don't like the darker color choices which resembles a lot of Mac OSX.

*. This is only compatible with the Gnome Shell 3.0. So if you're using the 11.10 Oneiric Alpha 3 and the Gnome 3.1.4 latest builds then this may not work.


How to install it?

1. The installation is quite simple actually. Just download the shell theme from here first.

I'm gonna quote the author Danrabbit here...

Backup your theme directory first. Extract the zip file and rename "gnome-shell" directory to "theme" and copy to /usr/share/gnome-shell/. This path is usually where GNOME Shell is installed.
Restart GNOME Shell by Alt, F2, then type r and press enter.

2. If you want the icons, then get them from here. 

3. Get the beautiful Elementary Luna wallpaper from here.

Yep, that should do it!. Enjoy.

MintLiner - A Beautiful Greeny GTK3 Theme for Gnome 3!

It's not that easy to get over the first few impressions that you come across while doing anything or meeting anyone, right?. Just like that, you can create an impressive GNU/Linux distribution by doing some real hard work yet if you chose the wrong kind of colors and themes for your operating system... apart from all that hard/dedicated work... it can have a bit of a negative impact nonetheless.

It can also be a quite a hassle for a newbie who haven't even figured out how to change a theme in GNU/Linux for instance as well :). I've said this before, from the beginning Ubuntu did prove its worth in some aspects but they had chosen the worst color combinations, even for a "decent" look-n-feel and as a result I always felt a bit repulsive towards it.

And whenever I installed a new version one of the "most important" things for me was to get or change the theme to something else.

But there are few GNU/Linux distributions that comes with beautiful colors by default and Fedora is at the top of "my list". Another distribution is the Mint Linux which uses the Green and Black colors quite elegantly. Anyhow, if you use the latest version of the Gnome desktop version 3 who also happened to quite fond of that Greeny Mint Linux theme, then you'd love to hear that there is "related looking" GTK3 theme for Gnome 3 called MintLiner!.

Now remember, by default Gnome 3 uses a Window manager called Mutter (bit similar to Compiz) which is capable of creating all those 3D fancy effects, etc and the plugin that uses Mutter which enables Gnome to create that default, touch screen device optimized interface, is called the "Gnome Shell". The thing is that, you can't use MintLiner in your Gnome Shell interface.

This will only work in your Classic Gnome 3 desktop which can be "forcefully" enabled by the Fallaback mode. So after installing it ... remember it'll only run on the classic Gnome3 desktop, not in the Gnome Shell.

How to install it?

1. First download the archive from here (all credit goes to the creator danodymake) and extract the content.

2. Then copy the extracted folder to "./themes" folder in your "Home" folder or if you want the theme to be available to all the other users that uses that PC/Laptop then copy the content to "/usr/share/themes/".

Now you can apply the theme as usual.

If you want to tweak your Nautilus (file manager)...

The theme has a "css" file which can apply further more "MintLiner-ness" into your Nautilus.

1. To do that first go to the folder "/usr/share/nautilus" and copy the file called "nautilus.css" to your Home folder.

2. Then look for a file with the same name (nautilus.css) in the extracted folder and move it to that above mentioned "/usr/share/nautilus" folder and replace it. Remember you'll have to have root access to do that.

That's it. Now you're done. Enjoy!.