Folks, I think Kora might be one of the best icon themes for Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Certainly this year.
Kora isn’t newly new. I would be surprised if some of you reading this post already using it. I only came across it today on Reddit, but no lie: I’m impressed. On a stock Ubuntu install, nearly every (non-branded) icon gets a Kora style glyph – I like that.
Kora’s comprehensive coverage means results in instant, dramatic re-do on even the most vanilla Ubuntu installation:
Nice, isn’t it?
Flat Linux icon themes using simple 2D glyphs and constrained colour palettes are popular, but Kora provides a visual contrast to those due to clever shadowing, gradients, and allow elements within an icon “escape” the bounds of its otherwise uniform style.
Neatly, the Kora icon pack also works with the Folder Color tool so that you can get colourful and expressive with your project folders should Kora’s stock blue hue not quite do it for you (and if it doesn’t, there are separate Kora versions with other folder colours).
Fancy giving a go?
It’s easy to change icon set on Ubuntu, and doing so is an effective way to personalise and customise your experience. An icon set like this, which has both distinctive styling and decent coverage for desktop apps makes a solid choice.
To use the Kora icon set on Ubuntu, first download the master ZIP archive on the Kora Github page.
Once the download completes, extract the archive, and then move (or copy) the 4 named folders inside to ~/.local/share/icons/ (press ctrl + h to see hidden files in Nautilus).
If the “icons” folder doesn’t exist in your local share folder, go ahead and create it (remembering that it is case sensitive, so lowercase ‘i’) and then drop the aforementioned folders in.
With everything in place, you can then change icon theme on Ubuntu using the indispensable GNOME Tweaks tool. If you don’t have it installed, run sudo apt install gnome-tweaks.