Ubuntu Answers

GDM themes – these go in /usr/share/gdm
these are for the login manager

GTK themes – these go in /usr/share/themes
many Gthemes contain the gtk theme, the metacity theme, and a index.theme file. sometime they may just contain the gtk2 and gtk1 theme. sometime they may contain the gtk2 themes and a metacity theme without an index.theme file. when you go to themes section in the gnome control centre, you will see some themes on the left hand side. these are themes that contain, and are defined by, an index.theme file. and this file contains the name of the theme(eg Clearlooks-DarkOrange), what gtk theme is used, what metacity theme is used, and what icon theme is used. you can easily create your own themes using this file. for example, suppose that you want to create a theme called ‘DarkBlue’, you would creat a directory in /usr/share/themes called DarkBlue. then create an index.theme file (i usually just get hold of another index.them file from another theme and copy it to use as a template). place the index.them file in the DarkBlue directory. suppose also that you want to use Tango icons, Clearlooks-DarkBlue gtk theme and Hierbia metacity theme. this is an example of what the index.theme file would look like:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=DarkBlue
Type=X-GNOME-Metatheme
Comment=My made up dark blue theme
Encoding=UTF-8

[X-GNOME-Metatheme]
GtkTheme=Clearlooks-DarkBlue
MetacityTheme=Hierbia
IconTheme=Tango

notice that if you go to the icon directory, the name of the tango icons are called ‘Tango’. if you put ‘tango’, the icons won’t be found. same for the metacity and gtk themes. note that they are case sensitive.

You can very easily download a theme from gnome-looks.org and unpack the files in your home/username/.themes folder. Make sure that an index.theme file is included for it to show up in your theme control centre.

metacity themes – these go in /usr/share/themes
occassionally, metacity themes sometime come with the metacity theme and an index.theme file.

icon themes – these go in /usr/share/icons