Skinning Gnome 3 in Fedora 15 pt. 1/2

So, in my last post I demonstrated how I made my gnome 3 look a little less like gnome 3. I will now try to explain how I set up gnome 3 to look the way it does.

Setup

First we will install the tools needed for this task.

$ sudo yum install unzip gnome-tweak-tool gtk-equinox-engine gconf-editor

Adding buttons

Now the dirty secret here is that the option of having the buttons there aren't gone, they are just not exposed. So open your gconf-editor and go to destkop > gnome > shell > windows and change the value of the button_layout to whatever you want. The basic is that the : is where you want your title and then you put close, minimize and maximize wherever you want. As an example here is mine:

close:minimize,maximize

Or the default layout for Gnome 2:

:minimize,maximize,close

To see the changes press alt + f2, write 'r' and press enter. Then the gnome shell will reload itself.

Changing window borders.

At the same place in the configuration editor, you also have a variable called 'theme'. The thing is, that they still use the old metacity themes for this, so installing any old themes is okay. For the sake of this tutorial we have installed the equinox pacakge witch contains the border I use. So go ahead and change it from "Adwaita" (the default) to:

Equinox Evolution Squared

Reload the shell (alt + f2, type 'r' and press enter) and voila, new borders.

You can install new borders by copying the entire theme folder to /usr/share/themes and change the name of the above variable to the name of that folder.

Changing Icon Theme

Now this one is pretty straight forward. In this tutorial we are going to use a theme called "AwOken". Download the theme from the creators Deviantart page to your Download folder ( AwOken Theme Page (the Zip-file download link can be found on the right)). And run the following commands to unzip and move it to the correct directories:

$ cd ~/Downloads/
$ unzip awoken*.zip
$ tar -xvf AwOken-*/AwOken.tar.gz
$ sudo cp -r AwOken /usr/share/icons/
$ sudo chmod -r a+rx /usr/share/icons/AwOken

Start the Tweak Advanced Settings program (for eksample by pressing alt + f2 and write "gnome-tweak-tool" and hit enter). Go to Interface in the menu on the left. Select "AwOken" in the Icon Theme Dropdown menu, and then you have (hopefully) succsessfully installed the AwOken theme.

Changing the shell theme.

Since the plugin for the Gnome Tweak Settings doesn't seem to work (at the time of writing), we are going to install the theme system wide, forcefully replacing the original theme. First, offcourse backup your original theme.

$ sudo cp -r /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme \
/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme-back

Now we are going to download a gnome shell theme called Atolm from his deviant art site. Download the zip on the right-hand side of the page into your Downloads Folder. Then Copy all the theme files into the existing theme folder.

$ cd ~/Downloads/
$ unzip gnome_shell____atolm_*.zip
$ sudo mv -f gs-atolm/gnome-shell/theme/* /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/

Reload shell with alt + f2 and 'r', and you should have yourself a brand new shell theme.

Warning: Your shell might crash, if it does, copy the content of the backup folder back into your theme folder. If all else fails, run sudo yum reinstall gnome-shell

You might have noticed that the Tweak Tool has an option for GTK+ theme, but it does not work unless you have a gtk3 compliant theme. I will explain that and GTK+ theme changing in gnome-shell in the next blogpost. Questions may be directed in the comment section. Happy Hacking. :)

Gnome 3 Look & Feel

Before I start, I would like to notice that the work and progress in the Gnome 3 desktop is huge. It is an exiting project and it is still in its early stages. But then again, we must be allowed to say something at this stage too.

And to be frank, while I went into this with the attitude that I wanted to like and try this (I even installed it on my main computer), what I got disappointed me. It is not the workflow or the small things that annoy me. Quite the opposite, its because everything is so big. I have what you might call an average resolution on my screen (1366x768), and only the toolbars fill half the thing. Honestly I feel the design on the left is faar better.

But before I rant more, I tried changing the theme to be more suitable. While I was disappointed that the Gnome3 team was going for "One theme fits all" rather than easily customizable, and I got rather enfuriated by what seemed to be the reason behind a lot of the choices, like big ass menues so anyone with a bad touchpad can easily click them (Seriously, who makes a design choice based on "His hardware is bad so we must overcompensate for it"). After a couple of hours, I atleast got it looking more like the desktop I wanted.

Granted, I didn't manage to remove the menu-bar and hide the panel, like I always do to get more space, but atleast now I dont feel like gnawing my own eyes out.

Lastly, I just want to medigate the fact that no I am not a designer, and I don't want to tell people how to do things. But after looking at all the ways in wich people like to work, and set up things, I don't think that one way of doing something should be the end-all be-all of an Open Desktop Enviroment.