Theming CrunchBang Linux

Note: This page is very much a work in progress, so should be considered incomplete. Please contribute any handy hints, tips and links you have specific to CrunchBang.

You are welcome to edit the wiki page yourself, or just leave some feedback at the forum thread. Thx.

This entry is aimed at orienting the aspiring theme designer.

A look at some user customised CrunchBang screenshots from the forums will give you an idea of how much can be done.

• Try box-look.org (and gnome-look.org) for a huge selection of themes, icons, and all the rest
• deviantART has a fantastic selection of customization resources, inspiration and downloads
• The font used in the #! CrunchBang Linux official logo is 'FreeSans'.
• ScrnShots is a great resource when searching for inspiration
• Iconfinder and IconLook are two good resources for icon designers

Download your new icon theme and extract the contents to either /usr/share/icons for global (all users) or ~/.icons/ for your own use. Select your new theme from Preferences > User Interface Settings (under the Icon Theme tab, naturally).

In the command line, enter:

update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

You should be presented with a list of all the cursor themes you have installed. Enter the number of the theme you want, or press enter to stick with what the current cursors. Then logout/restart to apply.

SVG is the W3C standard vector format for icons on Linux. Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X.

• Inkscape vector editor
• Unofficial Inkscape forums, pretty active and useful
• Xara Xtreme for Linux, an alternative to Inkscape
• Iconfactory, a great source of inspiration (and icons)
• 10 Mistakes in Icon Design - a good primer article (Note the wastebin/shredder in example 6!)
• Susan Kare's portfolio - one of the original icon designers for Mac and Windows.
• Iconfinder and IconLook are two good resources for icon designers

Nitrogen (Preferences > Choose Wallpaper) is a background browser and setter for X windows. Move any wallpaper images into ~/images/wallpapers, and then select them from Nitrogen. The wallpapers supplied with CrunchBang are stored in /usr/share/backgrounds.

Although you can create wallpaper artwork in any graphics application, GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) will probably be the key piece of software in your arsenal. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

• Desktop and Wallpapers
• Official Nitrogen project page
• Official GIMP project page
• Meet The GIMP, excellent screencast tutorials
• deviantART wallpapers

GDM is a login manager (the splashscreen) that you use to login in, it starts all the desktop processes.

• Official GDM project page
• GDM Wikipedia entry

OpenBox is the window manager. It draws the windows and their parts like the close button. It also handles the drawing of the dialog boxes. (Ubuntu uses GNOME and MetaCity)

• The CrunchBang Openbox configuration guide
• Official OpenBox project wiki (see the index for theme information)
• OpenBox Wikipedia entry
• Urukrama's Openbox guide 'to help you set up and configure the window manager Openbox on Ubuntu (though much of the information below will also be useful for users of other Linux distributions)'
• IRC: irc.oftc.net #openbox
• Freshmeat.net OpenBox themes
• Customize.org OpenBox themes

ObConf (Preferences > Openbox config > GUI Config Tool) installs themes which use the .obt Openbox theme archive format for distribution. Open any .obt theme archive in your file browser, or use the interface provided inside ObConf.

You can also use ObConf to create .obt Openbox theme archives for distributing your own themes.

• ObConf guide on the OpenBox wiki

Conky is an advanced, highly configurable system monitor for X - a widget that draws text information dynamically on the desktop. Read more on the Conky page.

• Conky entry in the #! wiki.
• Official Conky project page
• Official documentation, a handy table of variables and config settings
• Conky Wikipedia entry
• Shared Conky config files on the CrunchBang forums.
• More config ideas on the Conky screenshots page
• IRC: irc.freenode.net #conky

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt. (KDE mostly uses Qt)

You can alter your theme quite easily through the User Interface Settings dialog (lxappearance). To alter the root theme (you may want to make it distinct as a visual indication that you have root powers), enter:

gksudo lxappearance

To begin creating your first theme, you can start by copying the CrunchBang theme to your home .themes directory ¹⁾, and experimenting from there.

cp -R /usr/share/themes/CrunchBang ~/.themes/new-theme-name

• Official GTK+ project page
• GTK+ Wikipedia entry

QGtkStyle now included with Qt 4.5 and later.

After installing Qt 4.5 or later, run the QT4Config tool, and change the style to “GTK”

qtconfig-qt4

X handles all of the graphics underneath Openbox, or any window manager system (like GNOME, KDE, IceWM) etc. It handles the communication between the kernel and the various peripherals like the monitor, scanner, mouse etc.

From Wikipedia:

The X Window System (commonly X or X11) is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for networked computers. It implements the X display protocol and provides windowing on raster graphics (bitmap) computer displays and manages keyboard and pointing device control functions. In its standard distribution, it is a complete, albeit simple, display and human interface solution, but also delivers a standard toolkit and protocol stack for building graphical user interfaces on most Unix-like operating systems and OpenVMS, and has been ported to many other contemporary general purpose operating systems. All modern GUIs, such as GNOME, KDE, and Xfce, developed for Linux and other UNIX-like system use the X Window System as a foundation.

• X.org, the official website
• The X Window System: A Brief Introduction

Lightweight X11 desktop panel. It's the default desktop panel of LXDE project: http://lxde.sourceforge.net/

• Official LXPanel page

PyPanel is a lightweight panel/taskbar for X11 window managers. It can be easily customized to match any desktop theme or taste.

• Official PyPanel project page
• Lots of .pypanelrc files at dotfiles.org

tint2 is a simple panel/taskbar intentionally made for openbox3, but should also work with other window managers.

The goal is to keep a clean and unintrusive look with code lightweight and compliance with freedesktop specifications.

• Tint2
• tint2 official Google Code page
• Howto replace lxpanel with tint2 & trayer, forum post
• Another forum post with many great example tintrc hacks

ADesk Bar is an easy, simple, unobtrusive application launcher.

• Official ADeskBar homepage
• ADeskBar on Launchpad
• Forum post on ADeskBar

This is an attractive Mac-style animated taskbar, that is easy on the resources.

• Project main page
• Debian package - Download link via Google Code
• Howto wiki page

[to do]

• Gwibber on Launchpad
• Compact Gwibber theme for the Eee PC, forum post

[to do]

• Themes from Mozilla Firefox add-ons page
• Themes from Customize.org

• Intro
• The basics (GUI Config Tool, User Interface Settings, Nitrogen)
• The different components that make up #!CB, and how to customise them
• Theming addons, accessories, panels and misc.
• Designing wallpapers, icons
• Some links to theory on good icon design, UI design, colour etc.