I lightened up my Ubuntu Lucid desktop appearance
Ubuntu was famous for being brown, even though it was probably half-orange for most of its storied existence. Mark Shuttleworth and Co. mostly blew that notion out of the water in Lucid Lynx (10.04 LTS), which is purplish and dark.
And if you really, really hate the button placement on the left side of the windows, there is more than one theme in Lucid's default GNOME desktop that automatically moves those buttons back to the right side of the window.
To access all of these desktop designs, go to System - Preferences - Appearance in the menu and start experimenting. There are eight themes in the default along with a link to get more.
I'm pretty simple about these things, so I looked at what came with the Lucid install and ditched the default Ambiance theme in favor of Radiance. I also dumped the purple wallpaper by clicking on the Background tab and selecting the Cosmos slide-show background, which not only presents a nice outer-space view but periodically changes the image (hence the "slide-show" portion of the name).
As you can see above, the panel and window borders are much lighter in color. I realize that the stars/galaxies/planets backgrounds themselves are dark, but everything else is lighter, and I can always find a new background wallpaper if I get tired of globular clusters and the like.
I don't really care about button placement and knowing full well that I can move them to the right side if I wish, I'm just going to leave them where they are.
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Wow!!! You changed the background and some icons!! this is soooooo damn interesting!!! any new shoes, also?
@turtaf not everyone is as keen on changing things on a computer, cut some slack and think of the noobs. If they are to be better users, they need to start somewhere. @Rosenberg Although simple, it is a good article and thanks for posting it.
I've been using Linux since 1995, and if I posted a screen shot of my working desktop Turtaf would vomit because of its utter boringness.
Dark background (Orion nebula, not Sombrero galaxy), a few temporary files as desktop icons, one taskbar on the bottom. Square window decorations, no transparency. Not even wobbly windows.
Because it works.
The Gee-Wiz for me is that I can launch another "desktop" on alt-F8, log into an entirely different "desktop" environment, and switch back and forth at will.
But then that's been inherent in Xwindows for a very long time.
I'm a newbee and I figured that out the first day
I've had laptops with Intel 830m chipsets since maybe the Ubuntu 7.10 days, and I actually had Compiz working in 8.04 (and still do on one of the two remaining working laptops with these chipsets).
Since Xorg embraced kernel mode setting, however, no Compiz for me.
That's OK because things like wobbly windows make me literally nauseous, so I always turn that stuff off.