Ubuntu Unity GTK, Icon and Window themes cannot be changed

[Vesnog]

I have Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64-bit installed on two separate laptops (Dell XPS L502X and Dell Latitude E5440). I installed the themes on Dell XPS L502X either by extracting compressed files or using the apt-get package manager, so far this procedure worked flawlessly after a fresh install of the OS on Dell XPS L502X; however this is not the case on Dell Latitude E5440 after copying the theme files from XPS to Latitute with an USB stick. What may be the reason behind it?

In order to copy the themes and icons from XPS to Latitude I used a memory stick and copied the contents of /usr/share/icons and /usr/share/themes directories from XPS PC which had the themes and icons installed. Later I plugged the flash drive into the Latitude and tried changing themes. In order to be able to set the themes easily I installed Ubuntu Tweak from the suggested PPA and I noticed that when I first launched Ubuntu Tweak it failed to show the themes apart from the cursor ones. The GTK themes were not shown for example, I thought this might have something to do with file permissions or something so I decided to find which themes can be installed from the repository and installed them accordingly. After this step GTK and icon themes showed up in the Ubuntu Tweak Tool, but when changed into a theme which was not supplied with Vanilla Ubuntu I noticed that there were inconsistencies in color etc. and the theme just did not display properly and for the icon theme not all icons were changes as was the case with XPS. I think I made a blunder here but could not figure out how to remedy it? Any assistance suggestion would be nice.


P.S : The cursor themes work fine, there are no problems with them.

[Vesnog]

I checked and confirmed that the permissions are the same on both computers and related dconf settings under org -> gnome -> desktop -> interface is the same if I did not miss something. What else should I look at is there any symlinks or anything like update-alternatives involved? I tried altering the theme via bash command prompt too but it did not work either. How can I determine which packages I should have installed in order for a theme to work properly? Furthermore, I noticed that by mistake I copied themes which are installed via a PPA is this the reason why it messed up so much? When installed via PPA where are the theme files stored and how can Ubuntu Tweak retain the theme names even after I deleted the corresponding files on a system which only had the files copied into it(does not even have the PPAs in its sources)?

EDIT: The themes were in the /usr/share/themes directory when I deleted the UTT also forgot about them. However I still wonder how themes installed via PPAs do they use symbolic links and install the files elsewhere?

[Dennis N]

A couple of comments:

Themes won't work well in Ubuntu unless they have unity support - that is they have a unity folder. Here are two examples. Both are GTK themes, and both support GTK 2 and 3. Greybird should work on Ubuntu since it has a unity folder. Albatross won't work (or works poorly) on Ubuntu since it does not have a unity folder. They both work in Xubuntu, however. In my experience, themes that won't work are not offered as a choice. Could be some exceptions to that observation.



dmn@Sydney:/usr/share/themes/Greybird$ ls
gtk-2.0 gtk-3.0 metacity-1 unity xfce-notify-4.0 xfwm4

dmn@Sydney:/usr/share/themes/Albatross$ ls
gtk-2.0 gtk-3.0 metacity-1 xfwm4

update-alternatives only deals with two kinds of themes - Plymouth themes and cursor themes:


dmn@Sydney:~$ update-alternatives --get-selections | grep theme
default.plymouth auto /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-logo/xubuntu-logo.plymouth
text.plymouth auto /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-text/xubuntu-text.plymouth
x-cursor-theme manual /usr/share/icons/FlatbedCursors.Orange.Large/cursor.theme


From what I have seen, PPAs offering themes install the folders in a standard location.

[Dennis N]

I earlier put a comment about galternatives on your other thread, in case you missed it:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2259250&p=13203491#post13203491

[Frogs Hair]

If any themes copied to USB from usr/share/themes have a PPA as their origin I would delete them for two reasons . one they won't update and two , if you enable the PPA source on the second machine you may end up with package system problems.

[Vesnog]

If any themes copied to USB from usr/share/themes have a PPA as their origin I would delete them for two reasons . one they won't update and two , if you enable the PPA source on the second machine you may end up with package system problems.

I deleted and re-installed them via adding the PPAs or manually downloading them, now everything works flawlessly. Thanks for your support.