Chris Harcourt

Recently I’ve spent some time playing around with the theme and panels I use. I haven’t changed much from what I’ve been using for a while, but there were a couple of subtle changes.

Here’s what I’ve ended up with, on my laptop at least (from the default Ubuntu 9.04 settings):

• Industrial Tango theme (apt: industrialtango-theme).
• Compiz desktop wall, expose and scale plugins.
• Reduced font size to 8pt for everything except window titles which is 9pt.
• System monospace font set to Terminus (apt: xfonts-terminus).
• 6 virtual desktops (3×2 grid)
• Auto-hide bottom panel, which contains only a window list. Other panel items from here either get removed or moved to the top.
• Customised applications menu, as I have some software not installed with APT.

It’s intentionally quite minimalist since I don’t like a lot of visual clutter. The window list is fairly redundant since I use the expose/scale plugins or alt+tab most of the time – hence the panel gets hidden. I have 6 virtual desktops for two reasons: I often have lots of windows open and to reduce the impact of being on my laptop and hence without 2 screens.

I’m still undecided as to whether I prefer the theme to be light or dark overall, especially having seen the Ubuntu Dust theme, however for the moment I’ve settled on light.

Here are some screenshots (click to view full size):

Clean:

Busy:

Expose:

Scale: