Installing and Using Themes and Icons in LL

[Kilpatrickap]

Great tutorial, very helpful

[Jerry]

Looks like a badly put together icon theme. The icons will work just fine, you just won't have a cache file, no biggie.

[Wirezfree]

Hi Valtam,

Thanks,
Unfortunately still getting the same error and warning in the gui... Dave

Code: [Select]

dave@hp-laptop:~$ sudo su
[sudo] password for dave:
root@hp-laptop:/home/dave# gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/
gtk-update-icon-cache: Failed to open file /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/.icon-theme.cache : File exists
root@hp-laptop:/home/dave#

[Jerry]

The correct format is:

Code: [Select]

sudo su

gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/

[Wirezfree]

Hi Looking for some help.
I installed some themes referenced by Kirkx from noobslab.
The installs did not produce any errors.
I could select the themes O.K, but on the icon tab there is a ! next to the Win7 icon item
It gives a message(warning):
"This icon theme as no cache file, you can create this by running"

Code: [Select]

gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/by itself it failed
So googling gave me the fact you needed to add "index.theme"

Code: [Select]

gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/ index.theme
Tried the command without & with sudo:

Code: [Select]

dave@hp-laptop:~$ gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/ index.theme
gtk-update-icon-cache: Failed to open file /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/.icon-theme.cache : File exists
dave@hp-laptop:~$

Any guidance welcome...
Thanks... Dave

Any ideas or suggestions how to fix this..??

Thanks... Dave

[bitsnpcs]

Hello l337n1nj4,
thank you for writing the tutorial I found it really useful.

[Wirezfree]

Hi Looking for some help.
I installed some themes referenced by Kirkx from noobslab.
The installs did not produce any errors.
I could select the themes O.K, but on the icon tab there is a ! next to the Win7 icon item
It gives a message(warning):
"This icon theme as no cache file, you can create this by running"

Code: [Select]

gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/by itself it failed
So googling gave me the fact you needed to add "index.theme"

Code: [Select]

gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/ index.theme
Tried the command without & with sudo:

Code: [Select]

dave@hp-laptop:~$ gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/ index.theme
gtk-update-icon-cache: Failed to open file /usr/share/icons/Win7-icons/.icon-theme.cache : File exists
dave@hp-laptop:~$

Any guidance welcome...
Thanks... Dave

[l337n1nj4]

Hey Kirkx, thanks for your input! I'll most likely be doing a mass edit of the tutorial, so I'll definitely use your suggestions!

[Kirkx]

1) I would suggest to start the tutorial with examples how to install icons and themes using standard repositories in Synaptic , then explain how to do it from a ppa, and only then move on to mention .tar.gz files (those can really scare off less geeky users migrating from Windows).

a) examples of icon themes available in Synaptic: human-icon-theme, tangerine-icon-theme, oxygen-icon-theme, and many more.

b) Windows XP theme available from Noobslab ppa:

http://www.noobslab.com/2014/01/windows-xp-theme-is-available-for.html

2) In the first post it was suggested creating ~/.icon and ~/.theme directories. The default system location should also be mentioned:

/usr/share/icons
/usr/share/themes

3) Here are two useful links:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100305220150/http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/Tutorials/IconThemes

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Icons

Creating a custom icon theme is actually quite easy, as long as you don't try to build it from scratch. I didn't like Faenza icons for partitions, folders and text files so I replaced them with icons from Human and Oxygen icon themes:

[anon222]

Side-note: I'm considering writing up a more thorough, more well-planned and understandable tutorial. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I have a few ideas for this tutorial.
I think there should be a part on changing window manager theme. Tutorial would be more complete with that.
There is a keyboard shortcut control+h to show and hide hidden files. I think that's easier than view > show hidden files, but that's just me. You should add that as a bonus.
I usually use Xarchiver and extract themes directly to the .themes directory, and icons to the .icons directory, but your way does the job too.
My advice for you is: If you want to to write a tutorial for an average windows user, and that is the group of people LL is targeting, add more pictures and less text.

[l337n1nj4]

Hi ninja,
Have you tried using solid color for your panel background?
Another option is to make a small image in GIMP and use that as a background.

Simple solution, thank you! 

Side-note: I'm considering writing up a more thorough, more well-planned and understandable tutorial. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[anon222]

Hello!

Thanks for the tutorial. How does one get the icons in the notification area to correspond to the color of the taskbar?

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

Hey N4RPS, thanks for liking my first tutorial! I've noticed that if you change your theme to one that is a different color than the original, the icons in the notification tray can look out of place. For example, this is what happens when I change Appearance from MediterraneanWhite to MediterraneanDark:



Usually, what I would do is simply log-out and log back in for the theme to take effect, but some themes won't cooperate. I don't know exactly how to fix this problem, sadly. However, when I change my theme to MediterraneanDark, I noticed that if I change to MediterraneanDarkest instead, I get the same color scheme but the notification tray icons blend nicely without a restart (as shown below).



For some people who have a theme series installed, this would be a quick and easy fix, but I do understand that there are certain themes that do not come in a series, or the user prefers the original to the others in a series. I'll look further into this problem when I have some spare time. Hope I can solve this for you!

Hi ninja,
Have you tried using solid color for your panel background?
Another option is to make a small image in GIMP and use that as a background.

[l337n1nj4]

Thanks, Valtam!

[Jerry]

Awesome contribution l337n1nj4

[l337n1nj4]

Hello!

Thanks for the tutorial. How does one get the icons in the notification area to correspond to the color of the taskbar?

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

Hey N4RPS, thanks for liking my first tutorial! I've noticed that if you change your theme to one that is a different color than the original, the icons in the notification tray can look out of place. For example, this is what happens when I change Appearance from MediterraneanWhite to MediterraneanDark:



Usually, what I would do is simply log-out and log back in for the theme to take effect, but some themes won't cooperate. I don't know exactly how to fix this problem, sadly. However, when I change my theme to MediterraneanDark, I noticed that if I change to MediterraneanDarkest instead, I get the same color scheme but the notification tray icons blend nicely without a restart (as shown below).



For some people who have a theme series installed, this would be a quick and easy fix, but I do understand that there are certain themes that do not come in a series, or the user prefers the original to the others in a series. I'll look further into this problem when I have some spare time. Hope I can solve this for you!