We talked some time ago about the OpenGEU Theme Switcher created by the great MadnessMike. Now, I’m showing you the real progress of this tool. Mike has improved it so much that it is now able of customizing an even greater number of pieces of your desktop! You know, or should know, why a Theme Switcher for OpenGEU was needed, but now let’s see the real progress done for this tool.

First of all, OpenGEU Themes are now supporting, where possible, ETK and EWL themes. Where possible because there are very few ETK and EWL themes around, Galeote has already developed wonderful OpenGEU Moonlight ETK and EWL themes for example, so they are already into our repos and the theme switcher is already able to apply them. With time, we’ll try to build as many ETK and EWL themes as possible, since this is very important for the users to have a coherent looking E17 desktop.

Here comes the most incredible news. The theme switcher contains a number of new functions, in this thumbnail you can see the GTK theme switching ability! No external gnome tool is needed to customize your desktop and OpenGEU theme, just enter this tag and you’ll be able to change the GTK2 theme and even see a wonderful preview

You can also change the Gnome icons set and have a big preview of the chosen set.

And then there’s the ability to change the Gnome Wallpaper. Why would you do it since E17 has its own wallpaper format and desktop? That’s simply because the Gnome wallpaper is used to have fake transparency in the terminal and other gnome tools work correctly. So, you can actually use this tag simply to change the background of the gnome terminal if you wish but personally I love a transparent terminal and would hate to have an E17 wallpaper looking a way with a transparent wallpaper showing another picture! And that’s why in fact every OpenGEU theme has its own E17 wallpaer and associated Gnome wallpaper

And here’s the feature I love more. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m really enthusiast about all the other features but this was a problem I would have never imagined to be able to solve but thanks to MadnessMike all of these dreams became reality

Basically, in OpenGEU Luna Nuova we used gnome-appearance-manager to handle gtk themes, gnome icons and gnome wallpaper but in this tool there where a number of useless options for an E17 desktop too. One for all, th desktop effects. My, it was not possible to disable the desktop effects tag… and in gnome, desktop effects are based on Compiz, a composite and window manager that cannot work in E17 because E17 is a WM itself. So users where a lot confused by this problem: why desktop effects where there if trying to activate them could not work in OpenGEU?

And that’s the reason why we decided to create this wonderful tool. Now we have our own E17 oriented Desktop Effects tag too

In OpenGEU, desktop effects are Xcompmgr and bling, both working on every kind of machine, even without 3D acceleration and even on older computers and Virtual Machines! Sure, we have no exposé or desktop cube, that’s for sure, but at least the user can enjoy some really incredible extra desktop effects such as real transparency, real shadows, fading in and out of the windows and elegant et simple animations. Isn’t that nice? And all of this remembering that OpenGEU is well known for being a very fast distro able to bring astonishing eye-candy on any damned machine

In the future we’ll surely add, maybe with OpenGEU 8.10, more complicated and 3D oriented desktop effects, I’m talking about Echomorph, the E17 Compiz port coded by Hannes J. , member of our team and already creator of incredible E17 modules such as Itask-NG but for now these kind of desktop effects are really nice

1. verdegal37, May 29, 2008:

   Congratulations fantastic , OpenGEU Theme.
   Only one question:
   As put more items on icons in OpenGEU Theme?
   Greetings:
   Agust

2. thedarkmaster, May 29, 2008:

   That is how can you add more icons to your system? Sorry, I’m not sure if I got it well, but if that was the question, you just have to extract your icon set to /usr/share/icons/ and it will appear in the OpenGEU Theme Switcher too

3. verdegal37, May 29, 2008:

   Thanks for reply.
   That is what I do , but the theme of icons extracted in /usr/share/icons me does not appear in OpenGEU Theme Switcher.
   Greetings:
   Agust

4. MadnessMike, May 29, 2008:

   It’s my fault! The theme Manager loads only the “scalable” svg icons. Now I’ll fix it very soon.

5. verdegal37, May 29, 2008:

   Hi MadnessMiKe , thank you by the notice , was going me crazy jajajaja.
   Greetings:
   Agust

6. MadnessMike, June 6, 2008:

   Now the icon problem is solved… try and tell me if something doesn’t work…

7. verdegal37, June 6, 2008:

   Hi MadnessMiKe , fantastic , thank you , work perfect!!!!!!!
   Greetings;
   Agust