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What Is The Best GNOME Desktop Theme?

I’ve been using the Shiki theme (Shiki-Brave) for some time now. You may recall that I wrote about it in My Ubuntu Look and Feel as well as How To Install Shiki-Colors Theme in Ubuntu. After seeing some recent posts on other blogs regarding some of the potential themes for Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid”, I’ve got the urge to try something new.

So, I this is my question for all of you readers out there, and don’t be shy about linking to screenshots:

What is the best GNOME Desktop theme?

Categories: GNOME Tags: ,
  1. January 22nd, 2010 at 10:07 | #1
  2. January 22nd, 2010 at 10:17 | #2

    I’m currently a fan of the Nigh Impression theme
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/Lucid/ImpressionGtkTheme

  3. January 22nd, 2010 at 11:33 | #3

    I use Clearlooks colors, the light version of Shiki-colors:
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks-Colors?content=75417

  4. bruno
    January 22nd, 2010 at 11:41 | #4

    Although preferring Gnome to KDE, I don’t seem to like the out-of-the-box look of it. Installing droid font helps but it still looks too 90′s. The themes try but without transparency they don’t take anywhere, specially the dark ones. So the answer to me is Compiz: enable it on your desktop and you get a whole new and beautiful desktop, whatever the theme you use.

  5. January 22nd, 2010 at 12:06 | #5

    I’ve been using Mira for the last two years or something. Still not tired of it.

    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Mira+by+sen7?content=117634

  6. January 22nd, 2010 at 12:50 | #6

    I currently use some variant of Shiki, but one thing that drives me crazy about it is that the Maximize button remains a plus sign when the window is maximized. I wouldn’t know how to indicate “Restore” in a way that matches the simple geometrics of Shiki’s window buttons, but a plus sign is not it. Of course I know what it means, so I don’t have any trouble with it other than that it’s not “correct,” although recently a friend was using my computer and was unable to figure out how to restore a maximized window.

    The problem with themes like Elementary and (Night) Impression is that their buttons have no indication of what they do. I haven’t installed either of them, so I would hope that at the very least some indicators are revealed when you hover over them. But that is a useless and confusing design gimmick.

    Mira is one I’d never heard of, but as is so often the case with GNOME themes, it sacrifices usability for style.

    In my opinion there are no good GNOME themes. Not one. Every theme is either under- or over-designed, or is an attempt to mimic some other OS. The under-designed ones can be functional but look awful, as though they were designed more than a decade ago. And the over-designed ones are too specific to a single person’s taste to really ever find traction among more than a small percentage of all GNOME users — and in the worst cases, they’re bulky, illegible, and have the unmistakable sound of bad techno seeping out of them. And, invariably, scantily-clad anime characters as wallpaper in the screenshots.

    I’ve been dying for someone to come up with the first decent GNOME theme ever to be released. I’ve spent hours scouring gnome-look.org. You’d think some talented but underappreciated designer would see this problem as a unique opportunity to floor everyone and demonstrate his chops. But I don’t feel like that’s going to happen any time soon.

  7. January 22nd, 2010 at 14:50 | #7

    I’m too tired of looking for a nice GTK theme. Here are two of my own tweaked versions.
    They need Aurora GTK engine.

    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/HuMac?content=116055
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Orange_MAC?content=115171

  8. precipitous
    January 22nd, 2010 at 21:56 | #8

    The default Ubuntu Studio theme is still the best one I have found…

  9. January 23rd, 2010 at 06:08 | #9

    The best? For me is the Human Theme, the default theme in ubuntu!

  10. BruceLee
    January 23rd, 2010 at 07:08 | #10

    - custom wallpaper
    - slightly modified “Lemur” theme (using GTK2.0 Aurora Engine):
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Lemur?content=88842
    - modified Radial 3.0 theme (using Emerald engine):
    http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/radial?content=71352
    - avant-window-navigator
    - trayer: stand-alone tray app

    >> screenshots:
    http://imghost.sonicatu.com/images/60Screenshot.png
    http://imghost.sonicatu.com/images/75Screenshot_1.png

  11. January 23rd, 2010 at 08:23 | #11

    I like the themes from the bisigi-project !!! :-)

    http://voku-online.de/comment-n257.html

  12. ali
    January 23rd, 2010 at 16:06 | #12
  13. Johonunu
    January 25th, 2010 at 15:53 | #13

    I love elementary theme ! The best : ) Icons too : )

  14. Shawn Thompson
    January 25th, 2010 at 16:56 | #14

    i like elementary with one tweak. i switch the close, max, min buttons to the left. with the exception of chrome, it’s nice.

  15. February 1st, 2010 at 07:36 | #15

    @Jay
    Wow — only a couple days after posting this rant, somebody went and released what appears to be a pretty respectable theme called Homosapien. It’s unique, legible, sleek, modern, stylish without being distracting, and it nicely adopts the classic “Ubuntu Brown.” I personally think it’d make a great default for Lucid.
    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/01/homosapien-proposed-metacity-for-lucid.html

  16. April 23rd, 2010 at 17:24 | #16

    I’m a fan of good themes and love to customize my desktop, I started searching for the best Ubuntu / Gnome Themes. I downloaded loads of them, bookmarked and saved the pages for further use. You can access what I have collected on my blog Ubuntu Dan. I hope this was helpful!

    http://ubuntudan.blogspot.com/2010/04/best-themes-for-ubuntu-910-karmic-users.html

  17. evelyn gallagher
    September 6th, 2010 at 08:49 | #17

    I would like to know how to set up a screen saver that counts down the days to an event.

    I want to enter the date of an event and have the days remaining before that event to automatically update and be reflected each day.

    I know people who have done this as far back as 15 years ago but it was done with Windows, I’m sure Ubuntu must have it’s own version but I can’t figure it out.

  18. November 12th, 2010 at 15:36 | #18

    I like the themes from the bisigi-project !!! (new Blog -> new Link) ;-)
    -> http://suckup.de/blog/2010/02/16/top-ubuntu-themes/