Do you remember the beryl icon and it’s menu? Here it is:

It wasn’t long ago that Linux users used a thing called beryl and compiz fusion hadn’t been heard of. Maybe you remember these days, maybe you don’t.

For those of you who did use beryl, I bet you miss that red jewel icon in your task bar that allowed you to do such easy tasks as change window managers and even access beryl’s options with just a right click. Well, now you can have these same options for compiz fusion with the Compiz Fusion Icon.

I find it a lot easier to get access to compiz’s settings manager when all I have to do is right click on a little icon instead of going through the menu bars. This is what the icon and options look like:

If you want to download it, it can sometimes be found in the repos, under the name ‘fusion-icon’ but if not, here’s a link to a .deb package.

Once downloaded and installed, you will find it in Applications -> System Tools

If you want to make the icon appear in the panel on startup, be sure to add it to your ‘Sessions.’ If you aren’t sure how to do this, I mentioned it in a recent post on Ubuntu Tweak.

For more information on the Compiz Fusion Icon, take a look at the Compiz Fusion wiki.

Changing your theme allows you to change the look and feel of your system. It mainly changes the standard icons to something new.

The first place to look for themes would be gnome-look.org. Click icon on the left. Or just click here. Search around for something that you like.

I like to keep my system looking dark since it doesn’t hurt my eyes too much. With my background being a night picture of London, it was only fitting for me to choose an icon theme that was mainly black. My favorite set is called black-white 2 gloss.

Once you’ve found your icon set, you will need to download it. I usually download everything to my desktop just so that I can find it easily, but that is up to you.

Your file should be a .tar file so you will need to extract it first. This can be done by right clicking the folder and selecting Extract Here. A new folder will have been created, this folder will be used in the next step.

To install the theme you will need to go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance

You should see something like this:

To install your new theme, highlight custom by clicking the custom box (top left) then click install (bottom right). This will open up a directory so just navigate to where ever you downloaded your file.

You will need to choose the file that was created when you extracted the original downloaded file. Once you’ve selected it, it will install and you should have new icons.

Don’t like it? Download some new ones and try each one out. If you can’t find anything you like and want to change it back to the original Ubuntu look, go to the appearance box (in the screenshot above) and scroll down and click ‘human’, then click close.

Did you change your theme? What icon set did you choose?

Changing your icons allows you to change the look and feel of your system. It mainly changes the standard icons to something new.

The first place to look for icons would be gnome-look.org. Click icon on the left. Or just click here. Search around for something that you like.

I like to keep my system looking dark since it doesn’t hurt my eyes too much. With my background being a night picture of London, it was only fitting for me to choose an icon theme that was mainly black. My favorite set is called black-white 2 gloss.

Once you’ve found your icon set, you will need to download it. I usually download everything to my desktop just so that I can find it easily, but that is up to you.

Your file should be a .tar file so you will need to extract it first. This can be done by right clicking the folder and selecting Extract Here. A new folder will have been created, this folder will be used in the next step.

To install the theme you will need to go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance

You should see something like this:

To install your new theme, highlight custom by clicking the custom box (top left) then click install (bottom right). This will open up a directory so just navigate to where ever you downloaded your file.

You will need to choose the file that was created when you extracted the original downloaded file. Once you’ve selected it, it will install and you should have new icons.

Don’t like it? Download some new ones and try each one out. If you can’t find anything you like and want to change it back to the original Ubuntu look, go to the appearance box (in the screenshot above) and scroll down and click ‘human’, then click close.

Did you change your icons? What icon set did you choose?