A faithful Windows 2000 theme

[Tonik]

I've set out on a journey to make my Ubuntu installation look and feel as close to Windows 2000 as possible, and I wonder if there are similarly minded people out there I could join efforts with.

I can understand those who will object strongly to this idea, and I see no point in arguing. I know my reasons: it's not possible for me to switch exclusively to Linux at this time, so I want to have a consistent look and feel everywhere, and I happen to like the Windows interface for the most part. I've used XP and previous of Windows for a long time so there's a tricks I use without thinking, and it freaks me out when things don't work I expect them to.

Here's what I started with:
- w2k [modified] (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/w2k+%5Bmodified%5D?content=77213) Metacity theme, slightly tweaked for more faithfulness
- "Redmond", standard GTK2 theme
- Cursor XP (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Cursor+XP?content=77833) mouse cursor theme
- GnomeXP (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/GnomeXP?content=69587) icon theme
- XP on Vista (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7119) Firefox theme
- TrueType fonts (notably Tahoma) from my Windows XP installation
- obvious customization of desktop appearance & behavior where possible
- some simple patches to metacity, nautilus, libwnck (I can code stuff, but unfortunately I'm very lazy)

Attached are screenshots of my current desktop highlighting some of the issues I want to address. Some things are relatively easy to fix; some are not. I welcome any help I can get with this project, especially from Ubuntu/GNOME developers!

I know there's XPDE (http://www.xpde.com/), but they're focusing on XP themed look for KDE, whereas I want the simple Win2k style on top of GNOME. I'll see if there is anything from that (and other) projects I can use, though.

I suppose it would be a good idea to consolidate all files and patches in one place and provide detailed installation instructions. Ideally it would be a single installer that would grab the necessary files from your Windows installation and set everything up for you (I doubt I have the skills and persistence to achieve that though).

P.S. It looks like it was not the right category to post to, but what's the right one?

[nowshining]

well for starters u need a better start menu :) other than that I had a mission as well, but not with gnome but with kde - i still have a few things to fix, it would be nice to make the taskbar buttons as you have them than flat :/ and I wish you luck on your jouney as I always thought gnome was better looking with the XP look, etc.. and kde the 2k looks, etc..

[nowshining]

a screenshot is attached below oh and I did do a GDM theme for Win2k

http://www.4shared.com/u/ssqmkkz/7e162fff/nowshining.html

you can find it there in the ubuntu/hardy section - i tried hardy a bit but had trouble with it on my machine so :/ then I went back to gutsy- there are like 3 diff. versions and as for the bkgd u see in the screenshot I got tired of the blue background and decided on the win95 default bkgd color.

[kerry_s]

a screenshot is attached below oh and I did do a GDM theme for Win2k

http://www.4shared.com/u/ssqmkkz/7e162fff/nowshining.html

you can find it there in the ubuntu/hardy section - i tried hardy a bit but had trouble with it on my machine so :/ then I went back to gutsy- there are like 3 diff. versions and as for the bkgd u see in the screenshot I got tired of the blue background and decided on the win95 default bkgd color.

that's nice :)

[Tonik]

Oh, that looks cool. I don't intend to go as far back as Win95 though :)

Are you using kwin? I see you have the window decoration button faithfulness issue already solved :)

[nowshining]

as for the gnome things - yes I compiled the gtk-themes, etc.. from gnome.org myself, updates things, changed things around, etc.. I forgot if exactly compiling gtk-themes would do the trick - i got a deb tho and I changed from QT to Redmond of course. :) it's not perfect but it works great...

and yes it's the default kde winmanager, and I only went back on the gdm login background color as the same as my background color of my personal desktop color.

As for the rest of the desktop it's suppose to be windows2k...

I did a complete theme/color of win2k and howtwo on kde-look.org but it links to 4shared where I have it hosted as you can see in my 4shared profile and as for the color it should be in the kde 3.5 howtwo and on kde-look.org..

I still have a few issues with the kde icon theme - i fixed it up a bit and I still have like a few things to fix, mainly removing the windows logo for some things and putting up a the penquin-linux for it.. :)

[HungryMan]

Oh, that looks cool. I don't intend to go as far back as Win95 though :)


I do :lolflag: but I only got as far as making a weird emerald theme of Windows 95. Why is it weird? because when you click the close button, the window menu pops up instead (apparently the areas of the close button and the window menu button are overlapping)

BTW, thanks for the links! Tried Vista and XP already and I want to go retro.

[toasty_ghosty]

Oh man. I think it would be great to make Gnome look like Win2000. Make this into a theme pack and I would be grateful for years. Well, maybe a few days...

[Tonik]

I exhausted my attention span of about 24 hours so now the project is on hold until stars arrange favorably again

[HungryMan]

BTW, did you make the metacity theme Tonik?
Thanks a bunch for it!

[ajwak95]

Well, my feeling is that with all Linux Distros, you want to distance yourself as far as possible. So to me and other DOS-like OS haters, this would be totally irrelivant!