There are 7 versions included: (Brave/Blue, Human/Orange, Wine/Red, Noble/Purple, Wise/Green, Dust/Chocolate and Illustrious/Pink)
The GDM themes have a max resolution of 2140x1200 and support all 16:9, 16:10, 5:4 and 4
screen ratios or anything in between. Sources for a Dual-display 3840x1200 version are included.Must read, or clowns will eat you:
* To install GDM's, extract .tar.gz file, drag n' drop desired themes to the login preferences window, or run make install as administrator in the extracted folder. For more options, type make help.
* To use the included wallpapers, save them wherever you like and add them through GNOME's appearance preferences or run the make install command and they will appear there.
* If you replace the logo.png files, you can change the logo of the GDM's to your favorite Linux distribution's branding.
* If you replace the "bg.png" files, you can use any wallpaper you want! (in fact, I recommend it if you don't like the included backgrounds, or want the GDM's to feature your favorite wallpaper).
* In Ubuntu, you can use the official PPA repository for easy installation and upgrades. For Ubuntu Karmic Koala, you can simply run apt-get install arc-colors to install from Ubuntu's universe repositories. The packages are also available in Debian Sid.
* Visit the GNOME-Colors project page for bug reports, feature requests, SVN and more downloads:
http://code.google.com/p/gnome-colors/
* Consider donating a small amount to the GNOME-Colors project if you wish to support it, or to show your appreciation. You can do so by clicking on the "donate" button next to the download section.
Ratings & Comments
114 Comments
lol Tom Riddle. Awesome theme by the way, I love it.
Are the older "swirly" (for lack of a better description) still available somewhere? Those were my all-time favorites. You make awesome themes. Thank you for your effort!
Ubuntu 9.10 ran make install 1. From the desktop menu, clicked System. 2. Clicked Preferences 3. Clicked Appearances 4. Clicked Theme tab arc themes do not appear. SPM shows arc-* packages installed. What now? Is this supposed to be this difficult for a newbie?
Brilliant theme, I like how you've taken the effort to debianize it and put it in a PPA. I would love to see this as the default theme in 10.04, or at least included in the repo's. Thanks.
Hi.. Do you have somewhere light version of this GDM theme ? My desktop is Clearlooks Human with X-color lite metacity - all are light/white, not like dark shiki but i am missing white GDM theme..
I tried making a light version a long time ago, but it didn't go well with the design. You can probably just use the wallpapers and paste them over another GDM theme with a lighter design.
the icons, shiki-colors and arc-colors are what i use all the time and for gdm themes i always make the gdm theme random and it always switches through the colours thanx for your work
Thanks, enjoy! Although a script to make everything random sounds really interesting. Imagine every time you log on, having a different color variation for gdm/gtk/icons/wallpapers, you never know what you're gonna get.
NOTE: This is probably the last release for Arc-Colors. The new GDM framework does not support GDM theming and currently has no graphical tools. Ubuntu was the last major distributuon holding on to the old GDM framework, but this will be changed for Ubuntu Karmic. The wallpapers will probably just be merged with Shiki-Colors in the future. There are bugs already filed, and GNOME developers already have their hands full with this - so it's best not to make things worse and just adapt to the new GDM and wait until the developers can work their usual magic in the future.
Where did you see this? I just Googled "GDM" and found nothing of the sort. If this is true, then I'm gonna say it right here, right now -- the GDM team is making a HUGE mistake, especially since these represent this GDM theme at its best. Please, say it isn't so!
The changes actually happened a few releases ago, Fedora and other distributions have adapted to the new design. Ubuntu has just been using a very old GDM version, which is not ideal from a security/technological standpoint. Yes, it's a regression - but surely in the future theming abilities will be brought back. Perhaps not for Karmic, but you may be able to select things like wallpaper/gtk/icons to be used at login.
I've finished working on a night-time version of the new wallpapers, based on work of the same artist - so it's very consistent with them. I know for wallpapers, animation could be implemented in xml, but can it be done in GDM? Something like specifying bg.png for daytime and bg-night.png for night time? I just don't know how it could be implemented into GDM. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know! Rendering of (blue) night-time wallpaper: http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/6586/arcnight.png
wow! Wonderful idea!!! I already use a XML animated background and it's really cool...If we can have also an animated GDM it would be awesome!
Just what I was thinking, although I've no idea if it's even possible with current GDM. If anyone has any tips on implementing this, let me know.
New wallpapers with support for more resolutions and sources for dual displays are now included. If anyone prefers the old and long-time used backgrounds, they are in the project page's downloads tab or in the subversion history.
Hello! I've really enjoyed your idea of bringing 'real' wallpapers to Arc-Colors. However, will the old ones disappear? I think I would prefer having the choice between the old one and the new ones... Should it be different packages, or just a different choice in gdmsetup. Btw, will the latest color added (chocolate, coffee, dust?) have a background like all the other ones? Thanks in advance! Bruno
Ideally - there would be a new abstract pack as an alternative to a new photo-realistic set. As for Dust, I don't think I'll make a brown wallpaper for it - It just didn't look quite right. The color palette doesn't lend itself for a wallpaper.
Just in case, source for arc-colors is here: http://code.google.com/p/gnome-colors/source/browse/arc-colors/Sources/arc-bg.svg If you have Inkscape, making an background of any color you like is really easy... just: 1. Save file and open in Inkscape. 2. Select the blue background below the other objects. 3. On the toolbar to the left, click the second pointer icon (edit paths by nodes) 4. Press SHIFT+CTRL+F 5. To your right, click "Edit..." under the color bar and choose any color you like. 6. Now just click SHIFT+CTRL+E and Export the image as "Page" with the resolution of your liking.
Just in case, source for arc-colors is here: http://code.google.com/p/gnome-colors/source/browse/arc-colors/Sources/arc-bg.svg If you have Inkscape, making an background of any color you like is really easy... just: 1. Save file and open in Inkscape. 2. Select the blue background below the other objects. 3. On the toolbar to the left, click the second pointer icon (edit paths by nodes) 4. Press SHIFT+CTRL+F 5. To your right, click "Edit..." under the color bar and choose any color you like. 6. Now just click SHIFT+CTRL+E and Export the image as "Page" with the resolution of your liking.
I want the next version of Arc-Colors to use photorealistic wallpapers (kind of like Arc-Dust is doing right now). If anyone wants to help, go to Wikimedia Commons (or deviantart) and look for existing wallpapers/images that you love and might want included in the arc-colors set! I've already picked some out, but there are too many images for me alone to go through. Guidelines for recommending a wallpaper: -Wallpapers must be licensed under creative-commons-by-share-alike 3.0 (no 1.0, 2.0, 2.5 or by-nd can be used), public domain or GPL-2+. -Original image must be at least 1920x1200 or larger. -Colors of wallpaper must complement an arc-colors set (for example, an orange-ish sunset could go well with human, wood/trees with dust, sky/ocean with brave, forest/grass with wise, etc...
Some examples: For Brave (cc-by-sa-3.0) http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4286/bohinjskojezero2ccbysa3.jpg For Dust (cc-by-sa-3.0) http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8772/crepuscularraysccbysa3.jpg For Noble (Public Domain) http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8619/sunsetcavanaughbaypubli.jpg Wallpapers like that would look great in Arc-Colors.
Could you made exactly same themes, but with gray background and gray wallpapers like in hardy-colors?
I don't want to add any more weight to the package unless there's a grayscale version of Shiki-Colors to match it. However, you can do it in less than a minute! 1. Extract the theme package 2. Select bg.png and text.png 3. Right click > Open with > GIMP 4. Click Colors > Desaturate > OK in both files and save. 5. ?????? 6. PROFIT!
Yes, I know how to do this, but there is a small problem: these themes willn't in ppa)) I think a lot of peoples like neutral themes, but your colorized wallpapers is to bright))) And you can add a new meta-package as arc-colors-dark and themes for it so the weight is not a problem))) Desaturation is not a good idea because of resulting images is to bright, more good if they have main background color #3c as in your hardy-colors. And I mean to change only bg.png in all themes to version based on #3c color and add the same wallpaper. So text.png and other elements will be consistence with icon and metacity theme, but bg will be the same as wallpaper. P.S. Sorry for my english :)
I personally don't think a #3C background will look good with Shiki, though... Since panels and window borders are that color, they could blend in with the wallpaper and potentially the window shadows as well. That's perhaps the reason I'm mostly against a #3C background color. I don't remember if the packages include the .SVG for the wallpapers, but I could upload it if you wish to make your own variation. I do agree that the backgrounds themselves are a bit too bright, though... Hopefully for a future version 2.0 I will redesign the backgrounds with grunge-ish colors (Think of Fedora artwork). After all's said and done, I think GDM should allow you to use your current wallpaper as a background... This would make most people happy and enhance consistency from login to desktop.