Stone Studio

You see cool themes on almost all screenshot of Ubuntu all over the internet but don’t know how to do it. No worries, it can be done in no time.

A much cooler way to handle this: using Emerald. Emerald needs Compiz to run and you can control the window borders, look and feel. You can set effects to your window like glass, glow, fade, choose active buttons, their position on the window (like close, minimize, maximize, shade) etc.

Install Compiz Config Settings Manager

Before installing Ubuntu, almost everyone has seen the spinning cube or the classy MacOSX-like dock bar and many other effects (4 desktops with 2 caps) in some videos, but some didn’t figure out how to enable/install/use them.

1. Go to System > Preferences > Appearance, on the Visual Effects tab and click on “Extra”. You may be prompted to install restricted drivers and if so, click yes, if not: you will have wobbly windows and a few other effects enabled. Drag a window and see if it’s wobbly

2. Then we need to install CompizConfig Settings Manager. To do so, open a terminal and type:

3. Then, go to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager (or type in a terminal: ccsm) and enable “Desktop Cube”, “Cube Reflection and Deformation” and “Rotate Cube”. You can of course alter their settings as you wish (set images for the cube faces, cube caps and so on), and also you may enable other effects if you like. Then you need to go to General Options, on the last tab “Desktop Size”, set the “Horizontal Virtual Size” to 4. And now you have a spinning cube. To trigger it, press Ctrl + Alt + LeftClick and drag to spin it. You may also use: Ctrl + Alt + LeftArrow/RightArrow to go to previous desktop / next desktop or Ctrl + Alt + DownArrow to unfold it and then LeftArrow/RightArrow to move around the unfolded cube. Now go back to CompizConfig Settings Manager and try out some other cool effects.

How to install Emerald on Ubuntu

Open a terminal and type:

Now download some themes for Emerald. You can get some from here or here.

To install them, go to: System > Preferences > Emerald Theme Manager and click the “Import” button and select the themes you want. To make your windows use Emerald, go to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager and enable “Window Decoration”, then click it and under “Command”, enter:

Then to run it for the first time, press Alt + F2 and type:

That’s all