Customizing The Appearance of Your Distro – Themes

So you’ve finally picked and installed the distro that’s right for you! However, are you looking at your desktop thinking that it looks a little bland? With Linux, that’s easy to fix. Just install a theme of your choice! And while you’re at it, if you prefer the Mac look, just install a dock for yourself! So here we go.

Themes:

There are many themes available out there for Linux, with many of them here. If you are using KDE, then these themes will not work for you. In that case, simply use this site instead. Both sites are setup the same, so the same instructions from here on out will apply to both KDE and the other Desktop Environments.

On the sidebar you can see various categories of themes. Out of all of them, you only need to worry about the Gnome Shell themes, the GTK3 themes, the cursor, and the icons categories. The Gnome Shell themes determine how your plain desktop looks (such as the taskbar and menu). The GTK3 themes determine how your applications and programs look. The cursor themes, well, define how your cursors appear, and you icon themes determine how your icons look. Just browse the themes until you find some you like. When you do, simply scroll down and click on Files.

Now. just find the one closest to the top that ends with .deb. (Unless you are using Arch Linux, OpenSuse, or some other distro not based on Debian. If you chose a distro from the article BEST LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS FOR NEW USERS, then you need only worry about choosing something other than a .deb file if you are using OpenSuse). Once you click it, you should be prompted to download it. After you do this, simply create a folder in HOME called “.themes“.

Now just drag and drop your downloaded theme into there. Lastly, search for theme on your Linux distro. Open it up and you should be presented with options to change your theme. Inside, your downloaded theme will be available to set as your new theme.

If Your Theme is not There:

If your theme is not there, don’t panic. Just re-open your .themes folder you recently made and go inside your downloaded theme.

From there, you should see a few more folders. just copy any folders with the word “Shell” in them and any that are named the same as the downloaded theme. Then, paste them in your .themes folder.

Lastly, attempt to choose your theme once again. It should now show up along with the other default themes.

Good luck!