Enabling Advanced Administration Settings

[cvp]

I feel retarded having to ask this, but Google has not been helpful.

The Ubuntu Guide makes frequent mention of some System > Administration > Advanced menu, but I don't have an "Advanced" entry.
Surprisingly, Ubuntu Tweaks wasn't helpful for this, either.

This all started when I became interested in changing my default login theme. My System > Administration > Login Screen gives me a very simple dialog box that will only let me change whether it plays a sound, whether to log on automatically, and what my default session is, whereas this mythical System > Administration > Advanced > Login Manager gives options about themes, among a whole lot else more.

How do I enable access to this "Advanced" Administration wonderland?

Thanks.
-cvp

[warfacegod]

I'm guessing you are running either 9.10 or 10.04. There is no Advanced tab in the Login Screen in either. The guide is referring to GDM 2.20 and GDM 2.28 is now in use instead.

You'll want this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1358026

[cvp]

Awesome.

Okay, next question:
Now that I'm looking at this...

...how do I change the theme to something I found on art.gnome.org/themes?

I've downloaded the tarball of the theme, which contains images for the background and miscellaneous doodads, as well as an XML file and a .desktop file. I saw somewhere someone trying to install themes by putting them in ~/.themes, but that doesn't seem to affect the menu choices.

I appreciate your help so far.

Thanks,
-cvp

[Excedio]

Awesome.

Okay, next question:
Now that I'm looking at this...

...how do I change the theme to something I found on art.gnome.org/themes?

I've downloaded the tarball of the theme, which contains images for the background and miscellaneous doodads, as well as an XML file and a .desktop file. I saw somewhere someone trying to install themes by putting them in ~/.themes, but that doesn't seem to affect the menu choices.

I appreciate your help so far.

Thanks,
-cvp

System > Preferences > Appearance

When that opens, go to the Themes tab. Drag & Drop the tarball on top of the Appearance window.

[warfacegod]

Some themes come as .deb, those you can double click.

[cvp]

System > Preferences > Appearance

When that opens, go to the Themes tab. Drag & Drop the tarball on top of the Appearance window.

It keeps telling me that they're not valid themes. I've tried this with multiple themes, all from art.gnome.org/themes.
I've tried dragging the tarballs (the .tar.gz files -- just so you know that I know what a tarball is), the extracted directories, the XML files in the extracted directories... to no avail.

[warfacegod]

Unpack them and manually place them in usr/share/themes. You'll need to be root to move them there.

[3rdalbum]

It keeps telling me that they're not valid themes.

You can't use GDM (login window) themes anymore. And you could never drop them onto the Appearance window anyway because the Appearnce window is for GTK (controls), Metacity (windows) and icon themes.

With the GDM login window you can specify a "wallpaper" and a GTK theme to use. You'll need to extract the GTK theme into /usr/share/themes.