Customize Linux Mint

Linux Mint customization
Some of the customizations I do

If Cinnamon theme is installed, I open Cinnamon "System settings". Browse into Themes and download more custom themes. These are the following themes I downloaded
1. Adwaita Classic
2. Ambiance Minty
3. Dark void
4. Elegance
5. Minty
6. Spearmint
7. Void
8. White Aqua
9. Zorin
10. Cinnamon classic

I prefer "void", Minty and Cinnamon Classic, although I love all of the above themes

If you want to install a theme manually, here's how you do it.
1. Download the theme of your choice from http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes
2. Unpack it into a local direcotry
3. Move the unpacked file into ~/.themes
4. Open Cinnamon settings, new theme should show up for selection

e.g. I installed mountain lion theme
cd ~/Downloads
wget http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/uploads/themes/RXU6-3BU1-D8AG.zip
This command downloaded a file (RXU6-3BU1-D8AG.zip). Now unzip it with command
unzip RXU6-3BU1-D8AG.zip
This would have created a directory "Mountain-Lion" with all files extracted.
Move this directory "Mountain-Lion" into ~/.themes
Open System setting and change you current theme to "Mountain-Lion"

Now that we have the choice of basic themes, out next objkective is to make sure if all of the themes render the way we want it. If you are not happy with the icons in the theme or with the window border, fonts, you can customize each of them for your need. Lets start with start menu

Star Menu
Linux Mint 15 (MATE) Start menu seems to have some weird disappearence issue. I wass not able to find out waht was causing it. That's when moved into Linux Cinnamon. I did not like the Star Menu icon and wanted to change it. Here's how I did it. Downloaded a PNG image of my choice (size 22*22 or 24*24) moved the file into the location /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/. Right-click on the start menu and select "Menu Settings". Changed the test "Menu" to "Start Linux" and changed the default settings image to the one I downloaded. Job done

Customize a theme
Open "System Settings"
Select a theme
Tap on "Other Settings" tab
Make your customization from the list for controls, window border, icon, mouse pointer and key bindings
I choose "Mint-X" for controls, "Neu" for icons, "eOS" for Window border, DMZ-White for mouse pointer, "Default" for keybindings

/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/search_engines/ideas.png


Install GNOME 3.8 in Ubuntu/Mint

The first repository is the Gnome 3 Team repo that contains all things missing from Ubuntu’s default repositories. You should add this one before the other two and run the usual update on your system. You can do this by typing the following commands on a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then you need to add the Ricotz testing repository that contains cutting edge git versions for the shell, gtk, glib, clutter and many Gnome applications and utilities.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
If you want to get some more latest Gnome components and risk the stability of the system even further, then you can use the Ricotz staging repository that can be correctly used only if you added the previous two.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/staging
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade