Blubuntu!

No, I haven’t followed suit to countless other people and changed Ubuntu’s Theme and/or Wallpaper and claimed “New Distro!”.

I am referring to Ubuntu’s default theme though.

Ubuntu has looked very “Brown-Orange” for a long time. The only really major change was from Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger” to 6.06 “Dapper Drake” (the first Ubuntu LTS release). With this change, Ubuntu dropped the more “Squared” window decorations for the smoother Window Decoration we are used to now (Listed as Human under Window Controls). With Dapper Drake came a new Icon Set as well. If you would like to see a progression of how Ubuntu has looked from 4.10 through 7.04, check out this article over on Phoronix: The Visual History of Ubuntu. If you look at that article, you will see that what you see now under Ubuntu 8.04 (and even what you will see later this month in 8.10) has changed very little since 6.06.

I really don’t mind the default Ubuntu theme too much, even though I don’t tend to live with it very long - it does “wear on me” after a while - it’s not very refreshing. I do think it’s given Ubuntu an “identity” because if you see that ugly orange in a screenshot, you know that’s Ubuntu - if you just saw Clearlooks, it could be anything!

With every release I can remember, there have been countless numbers of folks who have rallied around trying to get Ubuntu’s theme changed. Everyone chimes in saying how much they hate it, and how the colors are ugly and drab. As Hardy (8.04) was beginning development there was talk that Ubuntu was going to switch to a “Dark” theme, probably Orange and Black (or at least Dark Gray/Brown), however that never came to pass, because Hardy was to be the next LTS release, and it was decided not to change things up too much, and the new theme would be included in 8.10. So far, that new theme has been included in Intrepid, but only lasted past the first builds as default, and then the theme was switched to a Murrine engine based “Human” theme, again, aesthetically very much like what you see now. The “New Human” dark theme is included however (at least as of the 8.10 Beta), so you will have the option to select it.

One other time the community got involved and actually made something happen regarding the Ubuntu theme was as the Edgy (6.10) release cycle was under development. There was a project known as Blubuntu that actually did make it into the distribution. The goal was to make a theme as complete and professional as Human, utilizing the same Window Decoration design, however including Blue artwork and window borders.

That “Blubuntu” theme is still included in Ubuntu as of Hardy (I haven’t checked my Intrepid Beta install in VirtualBox to see if it’s still in the repo’s), however even in Edgy (6.10) it wasn’t installed by default, and had to be added by the user. If you want to install it simply execute the following command in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install blubuntu-look

Also, you could search for “blubuntu” in Synaptic Package manager if you prefer a “GUI” way of doing it.

Although it’s still there, its basically as it was developed for Edgy. Although that was only 2 years ago, Linux years are kinda like Dog years - 2 years is a long time, and there have been lots of improvements in GTK theming since then.

I don’t particularly like nor do I really have time to search through theme-sites such as gnome-look.org to find custom themes, and I thought of the “Bluebuntu” theme just now (after getting tired of looking at the tired looking old orange Human theme). I decided to install the blubuntu theme from the repos.

Once I got it installed, I realized just how dated it was, and quickly switched my theme back to Human and un-installed the Blubuntu packages (In particular, I thought the Window Decorations and the Scroll-Bars were a little to “light”). I then got to thinking - it wouldn’t be hard to “re-create” the Blubuntu look, with a slightly more “modern” appearance with what was available right in the distro.

To do this, first make sure you have the tango-icon-theme package installed and use the following steps to create a clean, modern looking “Blubuntu” theme!

First, the natural starting point is to go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance.

Once there, take the first step to “bluedom” by clicking on the theme titled “Glossy”.

Although this will put you in the land of “blue” we will take some additional steps to make it more “Ubuntu-like”.

Next, after you have “Glossy” selected, click on the “Customize…” button. Now, click on the “Window Border” tab and select “Human” and then click on the “Icons” tab and select Tango.

Now, if you’d like an Ubuntu themed “Blue” wallpaper for your desktop as well, we will turn to the Artwork projects leading up to Gutsy (7.10) and grab the Blue Elephant by Damianvlila (another link) from the Wiki page. Although this wallpaper isn’t exactly “me” I include it for completeness of the “Ubuntu” theme - hit up interfacelift.com for some interesting alternatives

Voila! And there you have it! A nice, modern looking, yet Ubuntu looking Blue theme for your desktop!

Enjoy!