[NOTE]: I'm posting this thread for those new to theming and/or for those who've never thought of theming their LL/XFCE desktop. I recommend checking out
XFCE-Look or
GNOME-Look for themes and icons that you may want to try out in this tutorial. I'll be using the MediterraneanNight theme for this series. (You'll understand later.)
First and foremost, we have to create two new folders in our user's directory. This can be found as soon as you open the File Manager [Thunar is the default file manager for Linux Lite, so that's what we'll be using here]. First, click
View at the top of the page, and then click
"Show Hidden Files". This will allow us to see the new folders we will be creating. Next, you'll want to right-click anywhere in the file manage, and choose
"Create Folder". Name the first
".icons". This will be where you'll place downloaded icon themes. Next, create another folder, and name this one
".themes". This will be where you'll places your alternate themes.
This is what your folders will look like. Notice the ".icon" folder in the top-left, and ".themes" in the bottom-right.For the next part, we'll need to get an alternate theme. I went to
GNOME-Look and picked up the
Mediterranean Night theme set because it includes the darker version of the standard theme (MediterraneanWhite for Appearence, MediterraneanNight for Window Manager) of Linux Lite. Find a theme you like and download it, or you can follow along with this tutorial and grab the MediterraneanNight Series from the link provided above.
Once downloaded, check your
Downloads folder as it will be there (
unless you've designated a different target folder for the download to go to. In that case, go to that folder instead).
My Downloads folder, containing the "MediterraneanNight-2.03.tar.gz" file.Next step is to right-click your downloaded file (.tar,.tar.bz, etc.) and select
"Extract Here". In this example, I get approximately 12 new folders, each being a different variation of the MediterraneanNight Series theme. To make things easy on us, we'll want to look to the left panel where it lists our
"Places". Right-click on your username, and select
"Open in New Tab". You should now see
Downloads and
USERNAME tabs above your files, like so:
In order for your computer to be able to use the theme files, you'll need to move them over to the .themes.
Right-click and
copy the theme files that appeared when you extracted the compressed file (in my case, MediterraneanNight-2.03.tar.gz). Next, go to your
user tab (mine is l337n1nj4 in the pic above), navigate to the
.themes directory, and
Paste them into the folder. You should now be able to use these themes for your panel and window manager!
Here's the easiest part. Open the
Menu, go to
Settings, and click
Appearance. This will give you a window that will list all of the themes available to use (including the ones you just dropped into the ".themes" directory). Select which one you'd like to use, and then click
Close at the bottom when you're finished.
To change the
Window Border at the top to match the rest of your window and panel, click on the
Menu, click
Settings, and then scroll down and click
Window Manager. Choose a style from the list, and then click
Close when finished. That's all!
My window using MediterraneanDark for the Appearance and MediterraneanNight for the Window ManagerTo install a new icon theme and use it, do the same as above. Download the icon theme from your choice website, extract it's contents, and move the contents to the
".icons" folder. This time, however, you'll want to choose the
Icons tab in Appearance, as shown below.
You can then choose which icon theme to use and click
Close when finished. You've now officially themed Linux Lite to your own personal taste, good job!
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to comment on this thread and I (or someone else) will be happy to help you!
