How to Install Faenza 1.0 Icon Theme in Ubuntu?

Faenza icon theme has got such a popularity that if you haven't heard about it by now, then that's considered as something weird :) (just kidding). But seriously, if you're looking for one of the best icon themes that works under Gnome, Xfce and KDE (also works with Ubuntu Unity too), then I'm pretty sure that there aren't that many that can outperform Faenza for both beauty and features.

Unlike with many other icon themes, this one comes with a complete, fully "colorized" usual icons + a full darker version (Monochrome), tool-bar icons, especial icons for mounted devices, etc. Few days ago the developer has updated Faenza to its official 1.0 version!.

This may not bring huge list of new stuff, but to mention few things such as...

*. A lot of icons added for Gnome Shell.

*. Enhanced icon support for the Xfce desktop.

*. Fedora auto-plus and release notes, SEtroubleshoot, etc new application icons.

*. All applications in 16x16.

*. Added a new status icon for: "nm-device-wired-secure" notification... are the "what's new" in this release.

You can easily install Faenza 1.0 icon theme in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and even in 10.04 by using the official PPA channel. As usual, open your Terminal window and enter the below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install faenza-icon-theme

That should do it. OR if you use any other distribution, say Fedora 16 for instance, then you can just download the icon archive from here and then extract the content. Change your directly through command-line to the extracted directory and enter the below command.

./INSTALL

This should open-up a window asking you to choose a distribution using their respective logos. Choose your Distro and the Gnome menu icon and hit enter. Later if you wanted to un-install it, then again come to that extracted folder and issue the below command.

./UNISTALL

All the proper information can be found in this Gnome Look page, from the developer himself. Good luck.

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Oxymentary - KDE Oxygen Icon Theme for Gnome (GTK+) Desktop!

The sad truth about KDE and Gnome is that they belong to a totally different worlds of their own (even though they try hard to make them look like friends... which is a bit sad actually). But despite all that, we should appreciate the work that's been done between these two rivals to make it easier for the users to use software written in GTK+ and Qt toolkits without much of a hassle.

Thanks to these efforts we can use applications that are written in both these different toolkits in both desktops including their icons/theme engines, etc. Anyway, I don't know about you guys, but I've always been amazed by KDE's artwork!. I mean from the themes to the ability to actually control the environment, KDE is an excellent desktop.

With the introduction of Qt4 and KDE4... the new artwork (icons and the mouse pointers, etc) was called Oxygen and they look totally gorgeous as well. Sadly, we couldn't use them in Gnome (other than you run KDE apps in Gnome). But recently, someone from Gnome-look.org has created a Oxygen icon theme for Gnome 2.+ called Oxymentary.

But remember the icon theme is not a complete set, yet. For instance, currently it does not have all the replaceable icons for applications under Gnome desktop. If you have installed the elementary theme, then whenever the Oxymentary cannot find appropriate icons, it'll use the elementary icons instead.

If you want to give them a try, then please download from here. Then simply drag-n-drop them in "Themes" window or extract the content to /usr/share/icons/ and then choose them from the "Themes" (should be looking for the name "Oxymentary"). Enjoy!.

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