The Holy Grail

[Dralt]

I just installed Ubuntu on a brand new notebook I boutght from Acer.
Overall, it works very well.

Now, I am trying to beautify GNOME, to get it as close as possible to the elegance of Mac OS X. Now, I DON'T WANT to make it look like Mac OS X. I am trying to find a theme that would be as elegant as Mac OS X.

The great thing/problem with GNOME themes is their many parts.

Some people love to make icons, so they make icons and nothing else.
Some people like to make window borders and they stick to that.
Some people to work on controls and they do that well.
Some people enjoy producing great backgrounds and nothing else.
Some people like to create themes for applications only.

Brief, it's all piecemeal and very flexible, but...when it's time to put all the parts together to create a global theme that takes care of everything, it's a nightmare.

Do you guys know any theme that would cover all aspects in a coherent and visually coordinated whole?

[ComplexNumber]

go here (http://www.gnome-look.org/) and take your pick. there are lots of themes and icon combinations that go well. some of them are ready made (ie they contain a index.theme file which includes a link to an icon theme, a gtk theme, and a metacity theme, so that when the theme is selected, they all change to the theme's pointed to)
personally, i don't see where you are coming from.

[Dralt]

personally, i don't see where you are coming from.

Maybe because you achieved what I am looking for.

Would you care posting a picture of your desktop and menus?

[ComplexNumber]

Maybe because you achieved what I am looking for.

Would you care posting a picture of your desktop and menus? not necessarily. its because i installed all the themes from gnome-look so that it gives me the greatest choice of what to select. it also increases my chances of finding one that i like.
honestly, i really can't tell you what sort of look that you're going to like because everyone has different tastes.

also, pay some attention to finding the right wallpaper to suit the theme and the colours used. minimalist wallpapers and wallpapers with generally made of only 1 or 2 colours are the best because they have the effect of enhancing and complementing the theme's colours rather than overwhelming and drowing it out. go to deviantart.com for your wallpapers. in the first screenshot, the colours of the gtk theme aren't that well matched with the icons or the wallpaper, but the wallpaper goes well with the icons. in the 2nd screenshot, its overall more harmonious, although the wallpaper could do with being slightly less bright. just experiment with what you like best - gnome-look provides screenshots of the various themes and can give you an idea of what looks good.

everyones holy grail is different, so just experiement with what works best for you.


i've just knocked up 2 sceeenshots for you:

[Dralt]

not necessarily. its because i installed all the themes from gnome-look so that it gives me the greatest choice of what to select. it also increases my chances of finding one that i like.
honestly, i really can't tell you what sort of look that you're going to like because everyone has different tastes.

also, pay some attention to finding the right wallpaper to suit the theme and the colours used. minimalist wallpapers and wallpapers with generally made of only 1 or 2 colours are the best because they have the effect of enhancing and complementing the theme's colours rather than overwhelming and drowing it out. go to deviantart.com for your wallpapers. in the first screenshot, the colours of the gtk theme aren't that well matched with the icons or the wallpaper, but the wallpaper goes well with the icons. in the 2nd screenshot, its overall more harmonious, although the wallpaper could do with being slightly less bright. just experiment with what you like best - gnome-look provides screenshots of the various themes and can give you an idea of what looks good.

everyones holy grail is different, so just experiement with what works best for you.


i've just knocked up 2 sceeenshots for you:


I must be too picky or too weird. I tried many combos, but I never stumble on a combo that made me say: "This is just as good as Mac OS X."

For icons, it's worse. Since most application developers have no issue with releasing their apps with crappy icon sets. I am using Rhythmbox right now and I see this ugly looking icon in the notification area. I know those are just details, but why spoil great software with bad looks. It takes years to develop great apps, why not spend a month to skin them properly?

[ComplexNumber]

i think my desktop looks nice. my actual desktop is none of the above, btw. it changes often, and while i like it, you may not. but i can assure you that there is plenty of choice. so if you can't find one that looks nice, you definitely must be too picky.
try the clearlooks gtk and metacity theme - that looks nice. try it with tango or gperfection icons.

btw mac OS X looks boring.

[cilynx]

The main issue here is that Apple poured millions of dollars into that interface. After that, they required that --all-- software for OSX work well and look good with said interface. It just makes sense that it's seamless.

What are you really looking for in a GUI? To some people elegant is a console. Some want a simple background and translucent menus. Other like contrasty industrial themes. What are you trying to accomplish aesthetically?

BTW: My Laptop's Desktop (http://blessed.wolfteck.com/~rcw/GreenScreen.png)

[Dralt]

The main issue here is that Apple poured millions of dollars into that interface. After that, they required that --all-- software for OSX work well and look good with said interface. It just makes sense that it's seamless.

What are you really looking for in a GUI? To some people elegant is a console. Some want a simple background and translucent menus. Other like contrasty industrial themes. What are you trying to accomplish aesthetically?

BTW: My Laptop's Desktop (http://blessed.wolfteck.com/~rcw/GreenScreen.png)

Yes, very true about Apple strongly pushing third-party developers to produce GUIs that blend in with their OS. Frankly, I believe that's cool. Much better than staring at this speaker icon that looks like a remnant of the 8-bit color palette era.

Now, GNOME and Ubuntu being open, it would be difficult to entice everybody to respect certain rules.

For me, Mac OS X is an elegant GUI...because everything is visually pleasing. You never get a low-resolution item next to a pixelated item. Everything fits together nicely.

If I thought a console was the way to go, I would not pay the price of running X and other heavy desktop managers. Don't you think a 100 MB of RAM should bring you more than a console?
(BTW, I love the console. A command shell is the best way to do anything fast.)

Aesthetically, I am looking for something simple, clean, consistent, homogenous...a simple color theme (no bright colors, 5 at most)...a very legible set of fonts...good but not excessive contrast...some translucency where it matters...

[ComplexNumber]

Aesthetically, I am looking for something simple, clean, consistent, homogenous...a simple color theme (no bright colors, 5 at most)...a very legible set of fonts...good but not excessive contrast...some translucency where it matters...
try clearlooks to start off. there are many that match that criteria, so i'm not really certain if i'm sending you in the right direction.

[henriquemaia]

What version of Ubuntu are you running?

I really like the default desktop theme of Ubuntu Dapper (upcoming release). Very polished.

[Dralt]

What version of Ubuntu are you running?

I really like the default desktop theme of Ubuntu Dapper (upcoming release). Very polished.

Yes, I do like the theme of Dapper Drake. It's one good example. I kept trying other combinations all day long. Always going back to the default theme.

:)

I am now running another combination based on OS X icons, Panther window frames and Clearlooks for controls. It works quite well too.

The big problem that won't be solved is all these apps that have not-so-good-looking icons. Themes don't replace these icons usually.

[cilynx]

If you're looking for a mellow OSXish icon theme, check out SnowIsh on gnome-look. It does replace the icons for most common applications.

[23meg]

I suggest you take a look at the gperfection2 suite on gnome-look.

[Dralt]

If you're looking for a mellow OSXish icon theme, check out SnowIsh on gnome-look. It does replace the icons for most common applications.

It's difficult to explain what I am complaining about, so, tonight, I will post screenshots to clearly show where my beef is.

I think all of this could be fixed if enough time was invested.
Team Ubuntu would need to define a set of best practices and rules for application developers.

I reckon most problems are due to the lack of scalability of graphical resources.

Example: Yesterday, I increased the height of the top panel. Suddenly, icons that were ugly-looking using the default height became quite nice-looking.

Vector graphics were supposed to fix that problem, but SVG turned out to be too slow, apparently.
The other method is to provide multiple versions of each graphical resource, to suit all sorts of contexts. I guess that's the method GNOME uses. (unfortunately, many application developers often provide far less versions than necessary to cover all possible contexts)

The problem is that certain graphical resources can look great at their native resolution, but ugly when shrunk or expanded.
Also, some graphics have an adequate amount of detail when viewed on a 128x128 canvas, but far too much detail for a 16x16 or 32x32 canvas.
This last point seems to indicate it is not reasonable to take the same graphical resource, rescale it, retouch it and expect it will look as good as the original. Depending on the size of the display canvas, one would be better off using a completely different graphical resource.

Anyway, I am rambling...more on this later...

[Dralt]

If you're looking for a mellow OSXish icon theme, check out SnowIsh on gnome-look. It does replace the icons for most common applications.

Well, you see, your answer somewhat symbolizes my rant.

You recommend a set of icons, but I seek a cohesive, complete, whole theme set, covering controls, window frames and icons.

This is my personal opinion, but from an artistic standpoint I don't see how you can separate controls, window frames and icons. If these components are not intentionally designed to work together under the same graphical charter, you are unlikely to end up with something that clicks.

So, if I use SnowIsh, what Controls theme and what "Window frame" theme should I use with it?

PS: Thank you very much for suggesting Snowish. Please understand I am not bashing you...I am merely trying to explain where I am coming from with this.

[ComplexNumber]

You recommend a set of icons he didn't. snowish is an all-in-one theme. it includes icons, metacity theme, gtk theme, gdm theme, splash screen, etc. go to gnome-look and type in "snowish" to see your yourself.

[PingunZ]

http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=28686

[Dralt]

he didn't. snowish is an all-in-one theme. it includes icons, metacity theme, gtk theme, gdm theme, splash screen, etc. go to gnome-look and type in "snowish" to see your yourself.

If that's the case, I take that back. :)
Great. I will try it out when I get home.

My apologies.

[Dralt]

http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=28686

Thanks, I will try this one as well...

[Dralt]

I thought I would post this here and admit my ignorance...

It has been a while since I last consistered GNOME as a viable desktop manager for daily needs, both at home and at work.

Every 2 years or so, I come back, try everything out, dig left and right, try to catch up, etc.
In previous years, I returned to Windows after each of my evaluation periods.

This year, I can't tell how it's going to turn out. GNOME has made a lot of progress!

This being said, I am looking for documents that will allow me to learn (from scratch) how all the pieces fit together from a technical standpoint.

This is how I see it at the moment:

Window managers (MetaCity, xfwm, etc.)

...are built on top of...

GTK+ (a widget toolkit)

...that relies on...

Xlib (the X Window protocol client library)

From there, determining how themes relate to these different components can be tricky...to me, at least.

Could you please post links that will allow me to re-discover how all of these components relate to each other from a technical standpoint?

[23meg]

Window managers (MetaCity, xfwm, etc.)

...are built on top of...

GTK+ (a widget toolkit)
Good to know you're happy with the progress and want to go deeper this time.

Window managers and widget sets are two different parts of your desktop environment. Gnome, KDE and XFCE are complete desktop environments with their own window managers, widget sets and suites of applications. Gnome's current window manager is Metacity and its widget set is GTK+, and together they run on top of the X window system.

[Dralt]

Good to know you're happy with the progress and want to go deeper this time.

Window managers and widget sets are two different parts of your desktop environment. Gnome, KDE and XFCE are complete desktop environments with their own window managers, widget sets and suites of applications. Gnome's current window manager is Metacity and its widget set is GTK+, and together they run on top of the X window system.

Thanks for the tutoring. That's what I had understood.

Now, here is something else I think is correct, but...

A complete GNOME desktop theme is made of 3 components:
- A theme for Controls
- A theme for Window Frames
- A set of Icons

- The "theme for Controls" provides parameters and tunes GTK+.
- The "theme for Window Frames" provides parameters and tunes MetaCity.
- The "set of Icons" tells MetaCity which icon resources should be used with each application.

Is this interpretation correct?

I have a tendency to get confused because I have seen several terms be used interchangeably. On the Web, information pertaining to GNOME as it worked 5 years ago, 4 years ago, etc. gets mixed together and it's somewhat difficult to draw a clear picture of the current situation.

If you know of any good reading materials on that topic, please post them.

I already found all the good stuff at http://www.gnome.org, though.

[ComplexNumber]

Is this interpretation correct? yes. also, the enxt version(ie gtk 2.9 and 2.10) of gtk will have support for users to select their own colour scheme too, so users won't have to rely on the themers (of course, users can change the colours themselves if they so wish at this present time).
you could also throw in the splash screen and the log in screen too.

[23meg]

- The "set of Icons" tells MetaCity which icon resources should be used with each application.Nautilus, the panel menu and some other GNOME apps, rather than Metacity.

[Dralt]

Nautilus and the panel, rather than Metacity.

Oh, really...umm, it makes sense...so...an icon set must be a map of media types to icon resources, right?

Do applications built on top of GTK+ expose some XML file that makes them themeable? (where, as a user, I could specify different graphics resources in a resource-ID-to-resource-location table)

UPDATE: Oops, you edited your answer while I was responding. :)

[23meg]

Oh, really...umm, it makes sense...so...an icon set must be a map of media types to icon resources, right?
Here's some comprehensive info on icon themes: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials/IconThemes
Do applications built on top of GTK+ expose some XML file that makes them themeable? (where, as a user, I could specify different graphics resources in a resource-ID-to-resource-location table)That table is the gtkrc files in the folders of your selected themes.

If you need more in-depth technical info you may also want to check out the gnomesupport.org forums.

[Dralt]

Here's some comprehensive info on icon themes: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials/IconThemes
That table is the gtkrc files in the folders of your selected themes.


A single gtkrc file for all applications?

Thanks for the links.

[23meg]

In perhaps very rough terms, the gtkrc file that's in the folder of your currently selected theme tells GTK which image to use for which specific widget, among other things. You can override theme specifications with your own custom ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file. See this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=89197) for an example.

[Dralt]

My desktop as of tonight:

[Dralt]

That's Human (Controls) + Aqua-Advanced-SQ (Window frame) + SnowIsh (Icons)...

Can't say I am proud of myself. :(
It's some Mac style without pushing too far.

Icons drive me crazy.

SVG icons almost cut it. They scale nicely, obviously, but they are still vulnerable to high detail/size ratios.

So, there is my summary on why icons drive me crazy in general:

1) It's difficult to find a set that covers all applets, applications and media types with the same cohesive, integrated graphics charter.

2) Non-vectorial icons don't scale well and unless they are provided in all required sizes you end up with situations where they look blurry, distorted, stretched, ugly.

3) Vectorial icons scale well, with a performance impact. I have a fast machine for this experiment, so I don't mind that.

4) All icons, whether non-vectorial or vectorial can suffer from too much detail. Such icons may look great at 64x64 or greater, but look like clumps of indistinguishable pixels when scaled down to 32x32 or 16x16. Which leads me to think it is a mistake to use the same icon design for all target sizes, unless such design is extremely simple.

[Dralt]

I have a few extra questions:

1)

Alacarte Menu Editor does not seem to allow me to edit all menus and menu entries of the standard menu bar. Is this normal?

2)

How could I change the icons that show up in the notification area?

3)

I could not find any icon set including alternate icons for things like the Battery Charge Monitor, the Network Monitor, the Network Manager applet, the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor and several other panel items. Where are the default icons for these located?

[Dralt]

An example of a quality gap that kills...

[Dralt]

An update for you people...

I have reached a level of extreme zen...there is my new desktop:

[cilynx]

Not bad at all. Personally, I like the icon on the app menu, but that's just me. Which desklets are you using for the menu / status job in the upper right?

[Dralt]

Not bad at all. Personally, I like the icon on the app menu, but that's just me. Which desklets are you using for the menu / status job in the upper right?

Don't take me wrong, I love nice-looking icons too. Yet, at 16x16 few icons look nice, unless they have a minimal amount of detail. I guess that's why Apple avoids such small icons as much as possible.

The bar is yab. The status job is SystemMonitor. Both run on adesklets and are fully themeable.

[ComplexNumber]

An update for you people...

I have reached a level of extreme zen...there is my new desktop: it looks well balanced. i was mentioning before to you how its important to select the right wallpaper to bring out the best in the theme. that reallu is so true - an inappropriate wallpaper can make a nice theme look awful. the wallpaper is minimalistic enough not to distract, and thats good. i think soft colours, minimalist b&w(like yours), pastel shades, and minimalist vectors work best for me.

[Dralt]

it looks well balanced. i was mentioning before to you how its important to select the right wallpaper to bring out the best in the theme. that reallu is so true - an inappropriate wallpaper can make a nice theme look awful. the wallpaper is minimalistic enough not to distract, and thats good. i think soft colours, minimalist b&w(like yours), pastel shades, and minimalist vectors work best for me.

I fully agree.

A wallpaper should not distract, it should reveal.
If it's too bright or too busy, it spoils everything.

[Nonno Bassotto]

ComplexNumber, could you please tell me what settings (controls, metacity, icons, wallpaper) were you using in the second screenshot you posted (the one with clouds on the background and a character map open)? It looks reaaaaaally nice to me. :-D Are you also using some different fonts?
Thank you

[ComplexNumber]

ComplexNumber, could you please tell me what settings (controls, metacity, icons, wallpaper) were you using in the second screenshot you posted (the one with clouds on the background and a character map open)? It looks reaaaaaally nice to me. :-D Are you also using some different fonts?
Thank you
sure thing :). i modelled it on bvc's superb smooth pastel theme here (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=35727). i even tried to find the same wallpaper, but could only find the nearest match (a wallpaper called YZX from deviantart.com. if you can't find it, i can make it available here, although i'm really not too sure if i can do that (just in case it has some sort of licence attached or something). the metacity theme is just standard clearlooks. the icons are dropline neuvo

as for the fonts, they are exactly as they are out of the box in fedora core 5 (ie i haven''t changed any fonts or any font settings)

[Nonno Bassotto]

Thank you, I'm going to try out your theme. :D

[ahaslam]

An update for you people...

I have reached a level of extreme zen...there is my new desktop:

I like it, especially the wallpaper.
I think a custom panel background would compliment it.
There's a link to my panel with the screenshots in my sig.

Good work, any chance of a link to your wallpaper?

Tony.

[locohijo]

How about a quick tour to the Gallery to give you some inspiration.

[simplyw00x]

So I think I understand what you mean by the 'holy grail'. Basically, you want an integrated, unified theme. I'm pretty sure I've managed this (with one or two exceptions). Here's a screenie:

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/2487/screenshot2di.th.png (http://img407.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot2di.png)

Let me walk you through it. I started by choosing a colour. Last month's was organge, a few months before it was blue, etc. etc. This time I chose orange (because human icon are _teh_ sex) and black. Then find a matching metacity theme (human was fine for me) and GTK theme (ubuntulooks-serengeti). Firefox has a human icon theme as well. Convenient dark wallpaper lying around...

The panel is fugly by default, so I made it transparent, and used gtkrc to change the text to white so I can read it.

The fun part was changing the gaim and rhythmbox icons. Use 'dpkg -L packagename' to show the files in the package, then edit the icons to taste.


Basically, I think my desktop is pretty unified; it's all about choosing a colour scheme and sticking with it.

[Nonno Bassotto]

Please, consider adding screenshots and links to your themes in this thread.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=184150
I'm trying to start a thread where people show their desktop and link to the themes they've used, so that anyone can replicate if he likes.

[ahaslam]

Now, I am trying to beautify GNOME, to get it as close as possible to the elegance of Mac OS X. Now, I DON'T WANT to make it look like Mac OS X. I am trying to find a theme that would be as elegant as Mac OS X.

Do you guys know any theme that would cover all aspects in a coherent and visually coordinated whole?

I personally like the 'GT4' theme by AlexR1 (available on Gnome-Look.org).
I'm am a recent Linux user and an absolute novice with Gimp, and I found it very easy to edit & modify this theme. Here's my customised GT4 theme:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=10997&d=1149952589

For more examples, see my signature.

Tony.