It may be yet to see a stable release but that hasn’t stopped many folks from (get ready for pirate punnery) from ‘walking the plank‘ of instability by using it.
What am I jabbering about? Plank – a lightweight dock application famed for its use in elementary’s will-it-ever-arrive Luna OS.
If you are crazy enough to be using Plank you might be looking for some neat looking themes that are to provide alternative from the default minimalistic grey-esque theme – and you’re in luck…
Smooth Gradient theme
“Smooth gradient” is rounded, spacious and overall glassy looking theme that will give Plank a nice, modern look and feel.
Transparent Matte theme
As you have probably guessed by it’s name “Transparent matte” is a matte textured theme with a hint of transparency.
Darkened Glass theme
“Darkened glass” really contrast with the overall smoothness of “Transparent matte”. Featuring a black to grey gradient for a pseudo-3D-ish feel, it helps give Plank an extra coat of gloss.
Installation
On to the fun part – download and install.
Downloading the themes is a simple clicking on the button below:
Due to the development nature of Plank installing a theme is not entirely straightforward.
The first thing you need to do is extract the Plank-4-Themes.tar.gz and then open the folder of the theme you want to use.
Then navigate to the “theme” folder within and copy both files from it.
Then open your home folder and:
- Press CTRL+H to reveal hidden folders
- Navigate into the ‘.config‘ folder, followed by the ‘Plank‘ folder
- Paste the copied files in there
Now Plank will restart itself and you’ll be using the theme you’ve selected.
Need Plank?
Ubuntu 11.04 through 12.04 users can get it by running the following commands. Before installing do note that Plank is experimental, non-stable software. It may crash.
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky
- sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install plank