Saturday 31 March 2012

Get A New Desktop Look With The Hope Theme [Linux]

I simply love how customizable Linux really is. You can transform just about anything and get a completely different desktop while still running Linux. For a fanboy like me, it's a thing of beauty. Speaking of beauty, there are so many different Gnome Shell themes and GTK themes in existence, that it's downright awesome. One of those themes is called Hope, an icy blue theme that is sure to make your boring desktop a lot more interesting. Download & Installation Ubuntu users can install it by adding a PPA repository and installing the package. Simply open a terminal window and run the following code: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kokoto-java/omgubuntu-stuff && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hope-gtk-theme . Everyone else can get the Hope GTK theme from here , and can be easily installed by extracting the contents of the download into your .themes folder inside your Home folder. If you use Nautilus, you can hit Ctrl + H inside your home folder and all hidden folders (those with a period in front of them, like .themes) will suddenly appear for you to see, making the extraction process a lot easier. From there, you should probably use Gnome Tweak Tool to change your theme to Hope. That's pretty much it! If you want, you can also choose to use a dark toolbar version, which will be appropriately named Hope-DT. This option should also show up in Gnome Tweak Tool. Theme Features This new feature brings a lot of nice changes when compared to the default Gnome 3 theme, named " Adwaita ". The title bars are now almost black, and give a nice contrast compared to the rest of the desktop. Hovering over the window control buttons will highlight them, so that there is emphasis on whichever button you're hovering over. I'm not sure if this was a previous version of the GTK3 or if this originated in the GTK2 theme, but at one point the rest of the window control button turned into an icy blue. Speaking of icy blue, other key areas are now that color. The buttons that follow the GTK styling are now softer and are surrounded by an icy blue glow. Anywhere you usually see orange in Ubuntu, you'll see icy blue instead. With the Dark Toolbar version, some toolbars will appear just as dark as the title bars. This may be a good change for some people, but not everyone. It really depends on your taste. This will be most notable in Nautilus and in a few other applications, but generally there won't be much of a difference between the two for most applications. Conclusion Hope is a theme that I really like, and have liked since the Gnome 2 days. Its port for Gnome 3 is very well done, and has been my preferred theme for a few months now. Hopefully you well enjoy the clean look it brings as well. There is also a Hope Gnome Shell theme included within the download for this GTK3 theme that I may be reviewing soon, but until then, you can simply follow the instructions on the download page for proper extraction and enable it using Gnome Tweak Tool. Do you like the Hope theme? What's you're favorite GTK3 theme? Let us know in the comments below!




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