GNOME Panel looking dull? Try one of these slick backgrounds

One of OMG! Ubuntu!’s favourite Deviant Artists, Half-Left, has put together three Gnome panel theme packs, giving you the choice if 15 slick panel themes in all.

How to fix panel applet background issues in Ubuntu

Chances are if you’ve tried out a custom panel background before you’ve encountered the annoyingly artefact-y look that of the panel atop this screenshot: –

There’s a quick hack to fix it, giving you the beauty of the panel.

We’ll need to get our hands a little bit dirty for this but providing you’re careful it’s of no great effort.

This guide will assume you’re using Ambiance as your GTK theme. If you’re using a different theme substitute the path in the commands below for the correct one of your theme.

You can fix this by commenting out or removing the include

“apps/gnome-panel.rc”

  • gksu gedit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
  • Gedit will open
  • Press ALT+F to open the ‘find’ bar
  • Enter “apps/gnome-panel.rc” (sans quote marks)
  • Enter a hash (#) at the beginning of the line to ‘comment it out’.
  • Hit Save.

Note that in order for the panel background to adhere to the ‘system theme’ you will need to remove the ‘#’ from the beginning of the same line in the same file.

Eye Candy panels