Gadget Pro

How to Install Elementary Luna Theme in Gnome 3 Shell

Gnome 3 or also known as Gnome Shell brought a lot of GUI changes when comparing with the existing 2x version. The changes are also massive and was something very similar that happened with the Gnome 1x to 2x "switch".

Those days (1x versions) Gnome used to give users a lot of features and options to customized the desktop (even better than KDE in features) but with the introduction of the 2x "jump" a huge list of those GUI configuration options were removed. So in a way, the Gnome 2x desktop was totally different one to its predecessor. 

Just like that the recently introduced Gnome 3 also brought a total re-design of the desktop GUI and computing in general thus just like with the 1->2 migration, it received a lot of criticism (both negative and positive ones, yikes!).

Anyhow, sorry about the "short rambling, introduction", if youre one of the fans of the new Gnome 3 apart from all those issues, and I gotta admit Gnome developers always had an excellent (highly relative) ability to provide good looking themes (although very little customization available) but after using it for months, if youre already bored with the themes that comes with it and looking for something that looks beautiful, then perhaps the Elementary Luna theme for the Gnome Shell might get you interested :).

Main features...

*. This is a complete theme suit but youll have to get an icon pack a wallpaper separately to the original shell theme (links below). But of course you can skip the icons and the wallpaper if you like as well.


*. Comes with a bit darker colors and my personal favorite, the awesome Blue color! :D. 

*. Theres a separate lighter version of the theme is also available if you dont like the darker color choices which resembles a lot of Mac OSX.

*. This is only compatible with the Gnome Shell 3.0. So if youre using the 11.10 Oneiric Alpha 3 and the Gnome 3.1.4 latest builds then this may not work.


How to install it?

1. The installation is quite simple actually. Just download the shell theme from here first.

Im gonna quote the author Danrabbit here...

Backup your theme directory first. Extract the zip file and rename "gnome-shell" directory to "theme" and copy to /usr/share/gnome-shell/. This path is usually where GNOME Shell is installed.
Restart GNOME Shell by Alt, F2, then type r and press enter.

2. If you want the icons, then get them from here. 

3. Get the beautiful Elementary Luna wallpaper from here.

Yep, that should do it!. Enjoy.

Available link for download

How to Install Gnome Paint in Ubuntu

Gnome-Paint is a simple and very basic painting application designed for the Gnome desktop which you can also use in Ubuntu Linux as well (obviously). But remember, this is not an advanced tool and some "must have" type features such as Text tool and the Zoom in-out tools are not completed yet thus you cant use them!.

But if youre looking for an application that you can use to draw "stuff" to kill some time :) and okay with not having the ability to add text (although you can use the pencil tool though) or Zoom them, then Gnome-Paint is a decent application. But as said before, please remember, this is not a professional painting application by any means.

Main features...

*. Since its designed by Gnome geeks :D, it has a simple yet easy to use GUI (designed using the GTK+ toolkit).

*. To your left youll see a list of tools such as: Crop, color picker, eraser and few types of selection tools. But you cannot use Text and the zoom tools, yet.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Flip, rotate and load various types of images.

*. Invert colors.

*. Save in different formats... are the main features.

You can install Gnome-Paint in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install gnome-paint

Again remember, this is still under development and the overall application responsiveness was not bad but I did encounter few slowish type issues. For instance, after using a tool (say the eraser), it took a small (very small but noticeable) delay to "update" it on the image.

Not "everything" is fully implemented yet...

This however is not a professional software by any means... but if youre looking for something that lets you create basic drawings under Ubuntu or GNU/Linux in general, then Gnome-Paint is a decent application which really needs some developing to be considered as a fully featured one in my opinion.

Available link for download